A Global Problem
Hearing Loss Is on the Rise
October 2025 | Dr. Stankovic explains genetic and regenerative approaches to hearing loss in The Naked Scientists science podcast.”
Listen to Dr. Stankovic 8-min segment at 22:35 (audio only).
October 2025 | In the podcast with Huberman Lab, Dr. Stankovic explains how hearing works and why hearing loss—affecting over 1.5 billion people—impacts people of all ages. She discusses how hearing loss impairs focus and increases the risk of cognitive decline, as well as the role of menopause and other biological milestones in hearing health, and shares science-backed protocols to protect your hearing and highlight risks to avoid.
September 2025 | At the Stanford Health Library, Dr. Stankovic talks about how hearing functions in health, what goes wrong in disease, and how to repair what has gone wrong.
March 2025 | Dr. Konstantina Stankovic shares insights on the future of hearing loss in Stanford Engineering’s podcast, The Future of Everything.
February 2025 | "Stanford Researchers Assist Paul Simon's Return to the Stage." After experiencing significant hearing loss in his left ear, Paul Simon collaborated with Stanford University's Initiative to Cure Hearing Loss to adapt his stage setup, enabling his return to touring.
The number of people with more than 20 dB of hearing loss is very large and growing rapidly. Data from 1990 to 2017 were fit by a quadratic function (R2 = 1) that was used to predict hearing loss prevalence from 2018 to 2040. Dashed lines indicate 95% confidence intervals. Global Burden of Disease Study 2017 (GBD 2017) Results. Seattle, United States: Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, 2018. http://ghdx.healthdata.org/gbd-results-tool.
Hearing Loss is Everywhere
It is a massive health issue. 1.5 billion people are affected by hearing loss and nearly half a billion people are disabled by it
It affects adults. 1 of 3 US adults between 65 and 74 have hearing loss2
It affects children. 2 to 3 out of every 1,000 children in the United States are born with hearing loss3
It is a massive economic issue. Hearing loss costs the world nearly one trillion dollars annually4
It has severe social and mental health implications. Hearing loss leads to social isolation, anxiety, and depression5,6,7
It is only getting worse. The prevalence of hearing loss is increasing with an aging population8…
Our Research Goals
The Stanford Initiative to Cure Hearing Loss (SICHL) identifies the fundamental mechanisms by which the inner ear functions and uses this information to develop novel approaches toward preventing damage, repairing and one day replacing damaged inner ear tissue.
Causes and Consequences to Hearing Loss
The Quest to Cure Hearing Loss
SICHL is tackling hearing loss in many different ways. Faculty members with a broad range of expertise work independently and collaboratively to uncover the details of how the inner ear develops, functions, and responds to damaging stimuli. SICHL provides access to state of the art equipment for investigative teams to use in their mission. SICHL provides resources to aid in the training of the next generation of inner ear scientists who build strong collaborations working on team projects that will enable them to be the research leaders of the future.
Your Help, Your Impact
Katharine Miller
Funds from SICHL helped us to purchase state of the art equipment that puts us at the cutting edge of tissue preservation for high resolution imaging. This will allow us to gain a better understand of the structural changes that occur in the inner ear under different causes of hearing loss – one of the main focuses of my research.
Pei Wang
My research is high risk, and in a small field, it’s not easy to get funded by normal funding/grants. I am so lucky, SICHL funds my project, which allows me to generate a series of genetic mouse models for exploring the function of a very large, and poorly understood deafness gene.