March 28, 2024 — Prevent Blindness has declared April as Women’s Eye Health and Safety Month. The nonprofit offers free resources—including fact sheets, shareable social media graphics, and educational videos—on eye health issues that predominately affect women.
According to Orbis International, blindness is a gender issue as 112 million more women live with vision loss than men.
Prevent Blindness shares that women have a higher prevalence of age-related macular degeneration, cataract, dry eye, glaucoma, refractive error, and thyroid eye disease. A report on global eye health by The Lancet Global Health found that this can be attributed to demographic factors (women living longer than men) and social factors (women having reduced access to care).
“Due to a variety of issues, data continues to show that women face significant barriers to vision and eye health care not only in the United States but [also] around the world,” says Kira Baldonado, vice president of public health and policy at Prevent Blindness. “By providing women the necessary information they need and access to resources for quality vision care, we can help put an end to preventable vision loss and blindness.”
Janine Austin Clayton, M.D., FARVO, associate director for research on women’s health and director of the office of research on women’s health at the National Institutes of Health, discusses a variety of women’s eye health issues including vision loss and mental health, access to eye care, and general eye health tips in the “Women’s Eye Health and Safety” episode of the Prevent Blindness Focus on Eye Health Expert Series.
Beginning this year, Prevent Blindness is partnering with the Delta Gamma Foundation to share resources and information related to women’s eye health with their members. Delta Gamma alumna Lauren C. Ditta, M.D., pediatric neuro-ophthalmologist at the Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital and associate professor of ophthalmology and pediatrics at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center’s Hamilton Eye Institute, will discuss children’s vision and parent advocacy in an upcoming new episode of Prevent Blindness’s educational video series.