Self-reported hearing loss, hearing aid use, and cognitive function among U.S. older adults.

Jessica is a medical sociologist who specializes in research on hearing loss, aging, and health disparities over the life course. Jessica’s work has described the “spillover” effects of hearing loss on health outcomes for both individuals and those close to them, as well as sociodemographic disparities in the onset of and life expectancy with hearing loss. Her research, which leverages both population-level data and electronic health record data, has appeared in the Journals of Gerontology, Social Science & Medicine, Ear and Hearing, and other leading journals in medical sociology, hearing, and aging research.

Jessica received a B.A. from the University of Michigan in Social Anthropology (dual Sociology/Anthropology concentration) followed by an M.P.H. in Sociomedical Sciences with a certificate in Public Health Research Methods from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. She subsequently received an M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology with a focus in Medical Sociology and Demography at Duke University. She then completed an NIA T32 Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Duke University Aging Center under the mentorship of Matthew E. Dupre, Ph.D. (Population Health Sciences) and Sherri L. Smith, Au.D., Ph.D. (Head and Neck Surgery & Communication Sciences).

Dr. Smith's core research focuses on improving the assessment and treatment of hearing loss in older adults. Specifically, her work centers on comparing the effectiveness of current hearing interventions, developing new, innovative clinical tools, and examining alternative service-delivery approaches that help patients reach their individual hearing goals and improve their quality of life.

Dr. Smith also collaborates with multi-disciplinary teams to better understand the impact of hearing loss on other health conditions and services. Current projects involve understanding the impact of hearing loss on surgical outcomes in older adults, determining the mechanisms that may explain the independent association between hearing loss and falls in older adults, and comparing different models of hearing screenings for older adults in primary care settings.

Dr. Dupre is a Professor in the Department of Population Health Sciences and the Department of Sociology. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Center for Aging and Human Development. Dr. Dupre is a medical sociologist who specializes in research on aging and the life course, health disparities, and cardiovascular disease (CVD) outcomes in older adults. As an interdisciplinary researcher, he has focused on several lines of work: (i) race and socioeconomic disparities in trajectories of chronic disease and mortality, (ii) the role of social stressors in the onset and progression of CVD, (iii) the development of adaptive risk-assessment models, and (iv) the social determinants of healthy aging in China. A unifying thread in his program of research is the application of life course theory to clinical outcomes research, the integration of population- and patient-level data, and the use of innovative statistical methods to better understand how exposure to social factors shape inequalities in health and aging. Dr. Dupre is the Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopedia of Gerontology and Population Aging (2021), co-editor of the book Disability Trends at Older Ages (in press), and has published in the leading journals of medicine, epidemiology, sociology, and public health. He has served as an advisor to the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Population Aging and currently serves on the editorial boards for multiple journals.

Areas of Expertise:
Medical Sociology; Population Health; Social Epidemiology; Cardiovascular Disease; Aging; and Quantitative Methods