Keep Hearing Initiative

Hearing
health equity

Hearing health equity is the mandate of the Keep Hearing Initiative, and the reason it exists. The Keep Hearing nonprofit provides research, education, and fair access to ACEMg in partnership with Soundbites PBC.

Watch the video series Fair access

Research, education and access

Research

Research for proactive hearing care

38
years of research
11
patents

ACEMg was developed at the University of Michigan Medical School.

The Keep Hearing Initiative has significantly contributed to Soundbites PBC's research and education projects and initiatives since 2019.

  1. Educational videos

    Producing the five-part series on sensorineural hearing loss and ACEMg.

    Watch the series
  2. Real-world evidence

    Co-authoring the real-world evidence study published in Global Advances in Integrative Medicine and Health (Seifer, Minor & Detweiler, 2026).

    Read the paper (opens in a new tab)
  3. Soundware

    Collaborating on the development of Soundware, the hearing assessment platform.

    Open the Hearing Explorer
  4. Next

    Preparations are now underway for a multicenter observational study of ACEMg, the next step in building the evidence for proactive hearing care.

Education

Learn the metabolic biology of hearing

One of our main goals is to help people learn about the dominant origins of hearing loss, and its cellular biology and metabolic biochemistry, in five video sessions on sensorineural hearing loss and ACEMg.

Session 1 of 5Overview
  1. Session 2The SNHL Problem
  2. Session 3How Sound Becomes Hearing
  3. Session 4When Auditory Transduction Goes Wrong
  4. Session 5ACEMg Becomes Soundbites
From the Soundware appHearing ExplorerSee the system that makes hearing possible, and watch sound transform into signal in real time.Open the Hearing Explorer

Access

Fair access

Noise pollution is not a background problem.

Chronic noise exposure is one of the leading environmental drivers of hearing damage worldwide.

The majority of those who suffer are in the Global South.

1.5 billion

More than 1.5 billion people had hearing loss in 2019, according to the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019 (opens in a new tab) (The Lancet, 2021).

+1.35 billion

Up to 1.35 billion young people, aged 12 to 34, could be at risk of hearing loss from unsafe listening to personal audio devices and loud venues, according to a systematic review and meta-analysis (opens in a new tab) (Dillard et al., BMJ Global Health, 2022).

The Keep Hearing Initiative is Soundbites PBC's partner in the pursuit of fair access to ACEMg.

The goal is to make ACEMg available to anyone who wants it,

independent of their ability to pay for it, along with assisting organizations working to accelerate the shift to renewable energy, because a cooler, quieter planet will help preserve hearing at a scale well beyond what we can do to address the problem.

Partnership

Two organizations, in partnership

Nonprofit

Keep Hearing Initiative

Provides research, education, and fair access to ACEMg in partnership with Soundbites PBC. Hearing health equity is its mandate. Keep Hearing does not sell any products.

Public benefit corporation

Soundbites PBC

Makes ACEMg available as Soundbites. Its purpose is written into its legal structure: research and published evidence, patents and the people behind them, and a portion of its revenue support hearing health equity.

Visit soundbites.com (opens in a new tab)

Some people have roles in both organizations. Read our conflict of interest statement

Earth textures: Solar System Scope / CC BY 4.0 (adapted).