Greetings from the President
I am pleased to announce that I have been reappointed as the President of the Japan Audiological Society for the fiscal years 2021 and 2022. I offer my greetings to all of you.
Our Society is an organization recognized by society and approved by the Japanese government. We cooperated with the Diet Members’ League for Deafness Measures during the last fiscal year. We contributed to realization of the “System Improvement Project for Newborn Hearing Screening” and the “Core Model Project for Supporting Children with Hearing Impairment.” In addition, we requested “measures for hearing loss other than newborns’ cases,” the contents of which are incorporated in the “Japan Hearing Vision – To realize support for people with hearing loss with their life cycle.” Due to these activities, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) has revised the “Guide to Education for the Deaf” for the first time since 1995. We want to continue such social efforts in the future.
As of January 2021, the fury of the coronavirus pandemic is showing no signs of abating. All research meetings in 2020 were canceled, as has the audiometry workshop in February this year. Under this circumstance, the 65th Annual Meeting of the Japan Audiological Society was held in a hybrid format of on-site and on-demand transmission in October last year under the leadership of Professor Michihiko Sone in Nagoya University, and more than 900 people attended. I want to express my sincere gratitude to President Sone and all those involved in organizing that conference. Although we cannot yet foresee the course that this pandemic will take in the future, we have established a system to respond flexibly and promptly to the situation by revising our Articles of Incorporation at last year’s General Assembly, and we would like to proceed with our activities without stagnating.
The purposes and roles of the Japan Audiological Society are as follows: to nurture physicians with expert knowledge on the structure (anatomy and organization) and function (physiology) of hearing, pathology and pathophysiology of hearing loss, prevention of hearing loss and protection of hearing, diagnosis and treatment of hearing loss, and clarification of mechanisms of hearing impairment, development and evaluation of rehabilitation measures for hearing impairment, clarification of social disadvantages caused by hearing impairment and contribution to societal welfare. These are just a few of the many fields and areas covered. For progress in audiology and development of the Japan Audiological Society, I would like to cooperate with the directors, advisors, and supervisors of this society. I request the continued support of our members, by actively participating in our society’s activities and contributing to scientific lectures and articles to Audiology Japan, our official journal.
President, Japan Audiological Society
Tatsuya Yamasoba.
