(Rockville, MD - November 17, 2008) The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) and WYNIT, Inc. recently agreed to work together to promote "America: Tuned In Today . . But Tuned Out Tomorrow?", an ASHA public education campaign with a safe listening message about using personal audio technology.
Under the agreement, ASHA will receive in-kind support from WYNIT a leading national distributor of consumer electronics products, and the manufacturers that it serves, including Able Planet, Future Sonics, JLab, SteelSeries and V-Moda. All will promote the ASHA campaign's hearing safety message as part of their already solid history of encouraging safe use of their products.
ASHA is the national professional, scientific, and credentialing association for more than 130,000 speech-language pathologists, audiologists, and speech and hearing scientists. WYNIT, Inc. is a leading national distributor with a 20-year history of selling internationally-branded products in the consumer electronics, digital photography, video editing, outdoor, security and photo ID market categories.
"Ten million Americans have noise-induced hearing loss," according to ASHA 2008 President Catherine Gottfred, "and recent findings from a Johns Hopkins University study show that hearing loss in the United States is expected to to rise in part because of the growing use of personal audio technology, we appreciate WYNIT's sponsorship efforts to support our national safety program to promote hearing safety."
"WYNIT is focused on protecting consumers' hearing and keeping them listening for a lifetime," said Jay LaBarge, WYNIT's Vice President, Marketing. "We're pleased to support ASHA on this important public education campaign, and we look forward to being able to promote ASHA's campaign and its strong message of safe listening."
Since December 2005, ASHA's "America: Tuned In Today" campaign has been at the forefront of raising public awareness about the potential risk of hearing loss from unsafe usage of personal audio technology. The effort has attracted global media coverage, commissioned the first-ever national polling on usage habits of current personal audio technology, made cross-cultural minority outreach a focus of its activities, and appealed to a variety of ages through broadcast PSAs and tools like the kid-friendly "Buds" Web site, www.listentoyourbuds.org. ASHA's campaign has been honored for two straight years by the American Society of Association Executives with an Associations Advance America award. On November 19, the campaign will hold the first ever t Listen To Your Buds concert featuring Parents' Choice Award winner Justin Roberts was held at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago Nearly 1,000 Chicago-area school children are expected to attend.
The ASHA-WYNIT collaboration is the most recent one to be announced. Over the past two years, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), Califone International, Inc., Unwired Technology, and the rock group O.A.R have also joined forces with ASHA's campaign. CEA has agreed to provide financial and in-kind support;Califone placed product information about the listentoyourbuds.org Web site in their products, which are distributed to tens of thousands of schools yearly;Unwired Technology headphones are being packaged to carry an educational insert that has information about ASHA and its public service campaign;while O.A.R., which has sold more than 1.2 million albums worldwide, has made PSAs that are being distributed nationally to promote the campaign.
About the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA)
ASHA is the national professional, scientific, and credentialing association for more than 130,000 audiologists, speech-language pathologists, and speech, language, and hearing scientists. Audiologists specialize in preventing and assessing hearing and balance disorders as well as providing audiologic treatment including hearing aids. Speech-language pathologists identify, assess, and treat speech and language problems including swallowing disorders. www.asha.org.
About WYNIT, Inc.
WYNIT, Inc. is a leading national distributor with a 20-year history of selling internationally-branded products in the consumer electronics, digital photography, video editing, outdoor, security and photo ID market categories. The company operates with the core purpose of improving the competitive position of our dealers and suppliers with a passion for continuous improvement.
