Aug. 1, 2023 — To educate parents and caregivers on how to keep children’s eyes healthy, and to assist eyecare professionals in discussing children’s eye health with their patients, Prevent Blindness has declared August as Children’s Eye Health and Safety Month.
 
The nonprofit offers a variety of free resources in English and Spanish such as fact sheets, social media graphics, toolkits, and dedicated webpages on a range of relevant topics like myopia (nearsightedness), amblyopia (lazy eye), strabismus (crossed eyes), eye safety in relation to digital screen time, the importance of vision screenings, financial assistance programs, and more.
 
A new episode of the Focus on Eye Health Expert Series, “Children’s Vision and Eye Health,” features Jeff Todd, president and CEO of Prevent Blindness, interviewing R.V. Paul Chan, M.D., MSC, MBA, FACS; head, department of ophthalmology and visual sciences; the John H. Panton professor of ophthalmology, University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine; director, pediatric retina and retinopathy of prematurity service, Illinois Eye and Ear, UI Health; and a volunteer member of the Prevent Blindness Board of Directors. A previous episode of the series features Michael F. Chiang, M.D., director of the National Eye Institute, speaking with Todd about the institute’s vision and eye health initiatives for children.
 
Later this month, on Aug. 22, 7 p.m. ET, BlackDoctor.org will livestream a new episode of the “Seeing Eye to Eye: Celebrating Eye Health” Facebook Live series, featuring Terri L. Young, M.D., MBA, FARVO, the Peter A. Duehr endowed professor and chairwoman of the department of ophthalmology and visual sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Afua Oteng Asare, O.D., Ph.D., research assistant professor in the department of ophthalmology and visual sciences at the University of Utah. This series is a partnership with BlackDoctor.org, Prevent Blindness, the National Eye Institute, and the Children's Vision Equity Alliance.
 
Moderated by Prevent Blindness Wisconsin president and CEO Tami Garcia, “Reimagining How We Engage Communities from Identification into Care – Children and Adults,” a presentation from the 2023 Prevent Blindness Focus on Eye Health Summit, is now available.
 
For more information: preventblindness.org.