NEI raises awareness through traveling exhibits and informational booklets.

LOW VISION
The NEI Initiative�A Look at the Whole Low Vision Picture
By Barbara Anan Kogan, O.D.

The low vision category got a major boost of support, professional interest, and an increased public education campaign as more than 30 interested professionals gathered recently for the Low Vision Rehabilitation Conference. Attending were representatives from optometry and ophthalmology, vision rehabilitation organizations, industry, and the federal government. Held in conjunction with the American Academy of Ophthalmology's annual meeting in October, the conference was dubbed the NEI Initiative.

Appropriately held in Texas, where everything is "big," this diverse group was able to look at the whole picture of low vision from its strengths to its weaknesses, according to Rosemary Janiszewski, National Eye Institute's (NEI) director of the National Eye Health Education Program (NEHEP).

"We discussed how each group of attendees could work together in arming the public to ask questions about vision rehabilitation and to open new dialogue for vision care providers," says Janiszewski, who represented the NEI at the conference. The NEI is one of the Department of Health and Human Services' 25 institutes at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.

For more complete information on the NEI, visit its Website (www.nei.nih.gov), which lists some of the many achievements of the institute in the 30 years since its inception under the auspices of director/ophthalmologist Carl Kupfer, M.D., as well as information about the institute's ongoing clinical trials. The site provides eyecare professionals with awareness of the institute and low vision studies in which you may participate. Kupfer oversaw the NEHEP, which is a partnership of approximately 60 professional, civic, and voluntary organizations, as well as government agencies concerned about eye health.
The NEHEP's major focus is "to conduct public and professional education programs that help prevent blindness, reduce visual impairment, and increase awareness of services and devices that are available for people with low vision," according to the NEI. Kupfer adds, "The program helps disseminate research findings from the laboratory to health professionals, patients, and the public, which is a natural extension of our activities in vision research, and is the final step in the research process."

In Good Company

Larry Spitzberg, a 15-year Houston optometrist and immediate past chair of the American Optometric Association's Low Vision Section, was also among those attending the rehabilitation conference.

His beliefs are strong. "Low vision is not an emergency situation like, for example, a retinal detachment, but it demands optometry's ethical, moral, and legal obligation to refer a low vision patient for care," he says. He is backed in that belief by the AOA Board of Trustees, who passed a resolution that states, "Every optometrist should refer, co-manage, or treat a visually impaired patient with low vision rehabilitation."

"There are more things that can be done to help patients see better, and in some cases even enable them to drive," says Spitzberg. The patient's quality of life can be "greatly improved" he adds. Spitzberg has worked closely with Janiszewski as the AOA's representative since the inception of the NEI's low vision education program in October of last year. Spitzberg's Ph.D. in optics and physics and his own monocular low vision (from a childhood injury) enable him to provide an added understanding of the optometrists' responsibilities about low vision.

Optometrist Al Rosenbloom of Chicago's Lighthouse for the Blind has long been encouraging practitioners to provide low vision care. He joined representatives from the Vision Rehabilitation Committee of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, the American Foundation for the Blind, and the Society for the Prevention of Blindness at NEI's Texas meeting.

Raising Awareness

"As family members see their parents age as they themselves age, public education and campaigns to raise awareness of low vision can go hand in hand with the demands they can put on their eyecare practitioners" explains Janiszewski. The other half of the NEHEP, according to Janiszewski, is to educate practitioners to "know when to let go and refer patients for low vision rehabilitation." To accomplish these goals, the NEI's Internet site has a consumer's page about low vision.

The program enables "consumers and agencies to work together," she adds. It enables practitioners to ask, "What can I do for my patients?"

An NEI and AFB-sponsored cover letter, poster, and information booklet will be mailed to 50,000 eyecare practitioners in the United States. The public will be directed to local low vision specialists. Among the program materials of NEHEP's Low Vision Program are: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions about Low Vision, How Do I Know if I Have Low Vision, and an article about how to improve the quality of life, which was written and published in the November, 1999 issue of the American Academy of Optometry's journal, Optometry and Vision Science, by Carl Kupfer, M.D.

NEHEP's program is designed to target some 14 million Americans, which represents one out of every 20 people whose quality of life has been impaired by low vision. A low vision traveling exhibit, highlighting low vision solutions, will be available at the end of this year.

About NEI

The National Eye Institute was Congressionally-mandated in 1968 and it launched the Low Vision Education Program in October, 1999. The Institute plans to continue an awareness program aimed at the general public. Plans also include the NEI's continuation of meetings. The NEI's budget has also grown from $24 million to nearly $470 million in the past 30 years. Two additional programs under the National Eye Health Education Program include the Diabetes Eye Disease and the Glaucoma Public Education Programs. Low vision patients may have diabetes and/or glaucoma, which adds to the importance of educating the public about these two diseases. Information about each of these NEI health education programs is available in English and Spanish.

Each November is National Diabetes Month and the NEI's materials include an "Educating People with Diabetes" kit; informational pamphlets, an eye disease simulation, print public services announcements, and a press release about how health education leads to more eye exams in groups at risk for vision loss.

The glaucoma public education program includes NEI statements on the detection of glaucoma and vision screening in adults and facts about open-angle glaucoma. January is Glaucoma Awareness Month and a community education program will be available in 2001.

As patients and potential patients become more educated and become more aware to seek low vision rehabilitation care, we too can consider providing that care in our offices or actively refer to colleagues who do. EB