Eye Health Should be addressed as a Population Management Problem, according to a report issued by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM).
In order to avoid a public health crisis and keep up with increasing vision loss among the aging baby-boomer generation, correctable vision impairments must be eliminated by 2030, according to a report issued by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM).
“Vision loss and visual impairment is a major public health problem,” said Rohit Varma, MD, MPH, report committee member, and chairman, Department of Ophthalmology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. “In setting this high bar, the committee wanted to stimulate innovative ways on how to use the available resources more wisely.”
Among other recommendations, the “Making Eye Health a Population Imperative: Vision for Tomorrow” report recommends that the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issue a call-to-action nationwide to increase public awareness of the impending crisis should vision and eye health not be taken more seriously on a local, state, and federal level.
"Avoidable vision impairment occurs too frequently in the United States and is the logical result of a series of outdated assumptions, missed opportunities, and manifold shortfalls in public health policy and health care delivery," they said. "As a chronic condition, vision impairment remains notably absent from many public health agendas and community programs. Rather, vision is often regarded as a given—until it is not."
In the present environment of rapid health reform, HIT advances, genomics, and revolutionary technologies, eye care has left the public awareness overshadowed by other imperatives.
The most significant advances today in eye are are in the diagnosis and treatment of age related macular degeneration, made possible by the pipeline of drugs in the anti-vegf category.
40 years ago eye care was taken over by revolutionary care in the removal of cataracts, followed by surgical procedures for refractive errors.
“We have an absolute lack of a comprehensible, sustainable, implemented, and funded surveillance system for vision loss and eye disease in the United States,” Dr. Varma said.
The committee predicts that the absence of nationwide efforts to improve eye care could result in a doubling of uncorrectable vision impairments by 2050. This increase of vision impairments could also negatively amplify the effects of other non-eye-related chronic illnesses. It also negatively effects quality of life, independence, and psychological well-being.
NASEM declares eye health a public health imperative | OphthalmologyTimes
