Laura Coco

Laura Coco is a clinician-researcher who received her audiology doctorate (AuD) from the University of Texas and her PhD from the University of Arizona. She completed her postdoctoral training at Oregon Health & Science University and at the Center to Improve Veteran Involvement in Care. Currently, Dr. Coco is an Associate Professor at San Diego State University where she teaches graduate and undergraduate students and carries out research related to hearing healthcare access and equity as the Director of the Community-Engaged Research for Communication Access (CERCA) Lab. Her community-engaged, patient-oriented research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Resource Centers for Minority Aging Research, the VA Rural Health Resource Center, and multiple other community and foundation sources. Her research helps improve access to, and equity of, hearing care for marginalized populations. She specializes in using Community-Based Participatory Research, an approach that involves a collaborative partnership between academic researchers and community partners. As a multilingual clinician-researcher, she works closely with Spanish-speaking Latino communities to improve health outcomes, reduce disparities, and build community capacity. Her research involves: (1) identifying and measuring disparities in hearing care; (2) developing, evaluating, and disseminating hearing healthcare service delivery models that improve access to care for people with hearing loss; and (3) developing interventions that minimize the risk of developing hearing loss for vulnerable populations.