Healthy People 2010 Goal

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has established a framework for prevention for the nation.

It is a statement of national health objectives designed to identify the most significant preventable threats to health and to establish national goals to reduce these threats. Objective 28-4 (Impairment in Children and Adolescents) establishes a goal of reducing blindness and visual impairment in children and adolescents aged 17 years and under.

More than 12.1 million school-age children, or one in four, have some form of vision problem.¹ If not detected and treated early, these conditions could lead to permanent vision loss. They also clearly affect all aspects of life, negatively impacting a child’s ability to learn, athletic performance and self-esteem. From an economic standpoint, untreated amblyopia alone costs the United States nearly $7.4 billion in earning power each year.²

These are daunting numbers indeed. Yet, there is much that can be done! There are a large number of organizations and individuals with an interest in ensuring healthy vision for our nation’s children. These cross all spectrums of our society; including education, government, public health, communities of faith, families, healthcare providers and systems, and businesses, to name a few. To multiply our collective impact, it is essential that we come together around a core set of objectives, using these as the guiding principles for advancing children’s vision and eye health.

As the nation’s leading voluntary health organization dedicated to the prevention of blindness and the preservation of sight, Prevent Blindness America is well situated to guide the charge toward improved children’s vision and eye health. By laying out a platform for children’s vision, we are taking the first necessary step in this charge. But it is through the bringing together of the missions, resources, talents and knowledge bases of all stakeholders that we can maximize our collective impact and forge a common approach to children’s vision and eye health.

Such impactful collaborative efforts are not new to the vision community. Recent efforts involving the American Academy of Ophthalmology, the American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus, the American Optometric Association, the National Head Start Association, Prevent Blindness America, Reading is Fundamental and the Vision Council have successfully led to the introduction of the federal Vision Care for Kids Act, an ongoing effort to secure support for state-based initiatives focused on vision preservation. While there is a long way to go to achieve the passage of this bill, its genesis highlights the importance of a unified approach. Prevent Blindness America is eager to continue this level of cooperation toward the advancement of effective and appropriate children’s vision and eye health initiatives, and we are certain our partners are as well.

Over the course of the following pages, we share our vision for children’s vision. Certainly our objectives are not all-encompassing, nor are they easily obtainable, but we do believe our platform establishes a strong, scientifically sound, public health framework around which we can all advance a national movement for children’s vision and eye health.

References

1. Donahue SP, Johnson TM, Ottar W, Scott WE. Sensitivity of photoscreening to detect high-magnitude amblyogenic factors. J AAPOS. 2002;6:86-91.
2. Membreno JH, Brown MM, Brown GC, Sharma S, Beauchamp GR. A cost-utility analysis of therapy for amblyopia. Ophthalmology. 2002;109;2265-2271.