About
Dr Dalia Tsimpida is a Lecturer in Gerontology at the University of Southampton, a Chartered Psychologist (CPsychol) and Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society (AFBPsS), and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA). In the Department of Gerontology, she serves as the Examination Officer and Employability Coordinator.
Dr Tsimpida is the Thematic Cluster Lead for the 'Data Skills & Methods' Theme at the South Coast Doctoral Training Partnership (SCDTP), where she oversees the interdisciplinary training and support for PGR students across the SCDTP's four partner universities (Universities of Southampton, Brighton, Portsmouth and Chichester). As the Faculty Advisor of the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) Student Chapter at the University of Southampton- the first of its kind in the UK- she fosters student engagement in the field of ageing research.
In addition, Dr. Tsimpida contributes to the academic community as an Academic Editor for the Sections of Gerontology and Public Health and Epidemiology at PLOS ONE, and Editorial Board Member of BMC Public Health, a leading open-access journal dedicated to global public health research.
Over the past decade, Dr Tsimpida’s academic profile has combined world-class research, policy influence, and institutional leadership—advancing scholarship in the spatial and social dimensions of health inequalities and informing local, national, and global responses to population ageing and sensory health disparities. Her research centres on the social epidemiology of hearing loss and its intersection with noncommunicable diseases, with a particular emphasis on lifecourse health inequalities and their structural and spatial determinants. Her work interrogates the mechanisms by which socioeconomic, environmental, and place-based factors shape vulnerability and access to care, and she develops evidence-informed interventions aimed at improving population health outcomes.
She is a Special Advisor at the World Hearing Forum (WHF) and a Consultant to the World Health Organization (WHO), where she actively contributes to informing global hearing health strategies, policies and plans. Her internationally recognised research has earned her several awards, including the International Society of Audiology (ISA) Scholarship Award in 2020 for her groundbreaking work on the early detection of hearing loss in primary care—a key step toward inclusive and healthy ageing.
Dr Tsimpida's role as the Primary Investigator of the New National Study of Hearing resulted in the long-awaited update of hearing loss prevalence estimates among older adults in England in 2022, after 40 years. Her research uncovered a previously unknown north-south divide in the prevalence of hearing loss among older adults of similar age profiles, challenging the assumption of the inevitability of hearing loss in older age, commonly referred to as 'age-related hearing loss'. This work revealed that the increasing prevalence of hearing loss may not be solely attributed to ageing but could be linked to social and lifestyle changes. She introduced the concept of 'lifestyle-related hearing loss,' and developed the Conceptual Model of Hearing Health Inequalities (HHI Model), which illustrates the factors that impact individuals earlier in life and, if modified, could reduce hearing loss in older age.
Her work pioneered a new era in assessing hearing health inequalities by proposing the monitoring of the burden and distribution of hearing loss in older adults using routine health information systems, revealing the limitations of current data for planning sustainable care models, and proposed that the prevalence estimates should be based on the already available, actual data that reflect populations' needs, rather than on age projections. Dr Tsimpida's research has significantly influenced policy, prompting the integration of hearing care into health strategies both in the UK and globally. Following extensive engagement with policymakers and the co-production of a Policy Brief with Place Directors in Cheshire and Merseyside Integrated Care System (ICS), which highlighted the need to integrate hearing care into health strategies, one of the key recommendations from this analysis—later included in the Chief Medical Officer's Annual Report 2023—was the monitoring of hearing loss data, recognising its links to depression, dementia, falls, and frailty.
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