Assessing Pharmacy Technician Educational Training for the Provision of Over-the-Counter Hearing Aids in Rural Alabama and Mississippi Pharmacies
Public ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT06864273. Field values are reproduced from the official study page; the official ClinicalTrials.gov record remains the source of truth for eligibility, enrollment, and contact information.
Data is sourced from official ClinicalTrials.gov public API records. Always review the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for the latest information.
Official title
Increasing Access to Hearing Healthcare: An Assessment of Pharmacy Technician Educational Training for the Provision of Over-the-Counter Hearing Aids in Rural Alabama and Mississippi Pharmacies
Brief summary
Reproduced verbatim from the official ClinicalTrials.gov record. Not medical advice.
Hearing loss is a major public health concern due to its negative association with emotional well-being, cognition, and physical ailments, such as diabetes. Access to audiologists and otolaryngologists in many regions across the US is poor or extremely limited. Rural populations are older, less educated, and have lower household incomes compared to populations in metropolitan areas. Also, with increasing age adults experience greater rates of hearing loss. Fortunately, the 2022 FDA Final Rule for Over-the-Counter Hearing Aids (OTC HAs) could revolutionize assess to hearing aids and hearing healthcare by allowing adults with perceived mild-to-moderate hearing loss to purchase these devices over the counter, without medical clearance or care from an audiologist. Pharmacies located in rural areas now have the option to provide OTC HAs, something previously not possible. Currently, however, there are no established guidelines for effective provision of these devices in pharmacies located in rural communities. Educating pharmacy technicians to provide basic hearing healthcare related to OTC HAs use could address a critical need and create a new care delivery model to ensure sustainable, long-term access to hearing healthcare. The long-term goal of this study is to create a sustainable interprofessional collaborative between audiologists and pharmacists for the development of a hearing healthcare model that improves access and affordability of care in rural regions across the country. The specific aims are to 1) Determine an effective approach for educating pharmacy technicians for the provision of OTC HAs in rural community pharmacies, and 2) Identify satisfaction of care provided by pharmacy technicians and initial performance with OTC HAs in adults with hearing loss living in rural communities. A stepped wedged clinical trial design will be used to study the effectiveness of a comprehensive educational training program for pharmacy technicians. Technicians from rural Alabama and Mississippi, placed within four different clusters, will participate in a multimodal training program for the purpose of developing basic clinical skills to assist adults with perceived mild-to-moderate hearing loss. Additionally, adults with hearing loss who receive clinical services from trained pharmacy technicians will be asked to report on the care they received and benefit from their OTC HAs. The central hypotheses are a) that pharmacy technician training will result in greater understanding of hearing healthcare concepts compared to no training, and b) the training will lead to successful provision of basic hearing healthcare to adults with hearing loss in rural communities. The expected outcome of this project will be the establishment of a multimodal education program, leveraging the increased access of OTC HAs, to support those with hearing loss in rural pharmacies across the county. The ability of pharmacy technicians to provide this support will dramatically increase the availability of hearing services in rural communities, which will positively impact the quality of life for those with hearing loss.
Study identification
- NCT ID
- NCT06864273
- Recruitment status
- Recruiting
- Study type
- Interventional
- Phase
- Not applicable
- Enrollment
- 144 participants
Conditions and interventions
Conditions
Eligibility (public fields only)
- Age range
- 18 Years and older
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- Accepts healthy volunteers
This page does not interpret eligibility. Detailed inclusion and exclusion criteria are on the official ClinicalTrials.gov record.
Study timeline
- Start date
- Jul 24, 2025
- Primary completion
- Aug 30, 2027
- Completion
- Aug 30, 2027
- Last update posted
- Aug 6, 2026
2025 – 2027
United States locations
- U.S. sites
- 2
- U.S. states
- 1
- U.S. cities
- 1
| Facility | City | State | ZIP | Site status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Department of Communicative Disorders, Box 870242 | Tuscaloosa | Alabama | 35487-0242 | Recruiting |
| The Department of Communicative Disorders | Tuscaloosa | Alabama | 35487-0242 | Recruiting |
Site contact phone numbers, emails, and investigator names are intentionally not displayed here. Open the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for site contact information.
About this trial record page
- What this page shows
- Public field values for ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT06864273, including study identification, conditions, interventions, eligibility (age, sex, healthy volunteer), timeline, and U.S. site list.
- What this page does not do
- No medical advice, eligibility judgments, treatment recommendations, study quality scoring, or AI-generated medical summaries. No site contact phone numbers, emails, or investigator names.
- Where the data comes from
- Sourced from the official ClinicalTrials.gov public API. The official record is the source of truth.
- Last refresh
- Last update posted Aug 6, 2026 · Synced Sep 5, 2026
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Open the official record
The complete protocol, eligibility criteria, and contact information for NCT06864273 live on ClinicalTrials.gov.