About NCDHR

The National Center for Deaf Health Research (NCDHR) is one of 33 prevention research centers funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) through the Prevention Research Centers (PRC) Program. The PRC program is a network of academic researchers, public health agencies, and community members that conducts applied research in disease prevention and control.

The NCDHR partners with deaf and hard-of-hearing communities to promote health. The Center does not investigate prevention of hearing loss. Rather, it is concerned with finding ways to help deaf and hard-of-hearing communities eliminate health problems, such as heart disease, obesity, depression and other chronic health concerns.

The Center’s primary partnership is with the Community of Deaf People that communicate in American Sign Language (ASL). As time goes on and the resources of the Center grow, the NCDHR will increasingly partner with broader segments of the deaf and hard-of-hearing population.

The Center operates under the guiding principle of the cultural model of deafness, which understands deaf people as a cultural and linguistic minority group, united through their use of ASL and shared cultural norms. For more information on Deaf ulture and cross-cultural research competencies, please see the NCDHR’s Cross-Cultural Research Curriculum.

The NCDHR does not view deafness as a medical condition that must be cured.

Other pages on this site provide more information about the NCDHR’s mission and goals, its organization and staff, its history, the logic model that illustrates its key operations and outcomes, the PRC Program and the University of Rochester.