FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For more information:
Dori Jennings
Prevent Blindness Ohio
(614)270-0746
[email protected]
Prevent Blindness Ohio Declares August as Children’s Eye Health and Safety Month to Help Educate Families on the Importance of Healthy Vision and
Early Access to Eyecare
Columbus, OH (August 4, 2023) – Prevent Blindness Ohio has declared August as Children’s Eye Health and Safety Month in an effort to educate parents and caregivers on ways to keep children’s eyes healthy. As many kids are headed back to school in the month of August, Prevent Blindness Ohio offers free resources including fact sheets and social media graphics in English and Spanish, toolkits, and webpages on a variety of topics, including myopia (nearsightedness), amblyopia (lazy eye), strabismus (crossed eyes), eye safety in relation to digital screen time, importance of vision screenings, financial assistance programs, and much more.
Prevent Blindness Ohio (PBO) trains, certifies, and equips school nurses all across Ohio to conduct vision screening on their students, which allows for the identification of vision problems early, increasing children’s success in school. This effort is made possible by the Save Our Sight Fund at the Ohio Department of Health.
Through its Vision Care Outreach Program, PBO is also able to provide access to comprehensive eye exams for children living at 200% poverty or worse and whose families lack the resources necessary to pay for vision care themselves.
Additionally, Prevent Blindness will be debuting a new episode in the online Focus on Eye Health Expert Series, “Children’s Vision and Eye Health.” Jeff Todd, president and CEO of Prevent Blindness, will interview R.V. Paul Chan, MD, 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, and Director, Pediatric Retina and Retinopathy of Prematurity Service, Illinois Eye and Ear, UI Health. Dr. Chan is also a volunteer member of the Prevent Blindness Board of Directors.
And, as part of the Focus on Eye Health Expert series, Michael F. Chiang, MD, Director of the National Eye Institute, recently spoke with Jeff Todd about children’s vision and eye health initiatives of the National Eye Institute (NEI).
On Aug. 22, 2023 at 7 p.m. ET, a new episode dedicated to the discussion of Progressive Myopia from the “Seeing Eye to Eye: Celebrating Eye Health” Facebook Live series from Blackdoctor.org will be held. The episode will feature Terri L. Young, MD, 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, OD, PhD, 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.
In advance of the upcoming solar eclipses on Oct. 14, 2023, and April 8, 2024, Prevent Blindness offers the “Solar Eclipse Viewing Party Family and Children’s Toolkits,” available free for download. The toolkits contain fun ideas and activities for children to learn about eclipses and about the importance of eye safety while viewing them.
The recording of the 2023 Prevent Blindness Focus on Eye Health Summit discussion, “Reimagining How We Engage Communities from Identification into Care – Children and Adults,” is now available. The session was moderated by Tami Garcia, Prevent Blindness Wisconsin President and CEO.
Also available in August will be the new “Association Between Vision and Learning” fact sheet from the National Center for Children’s Vision and Eye Health at Prevent Blindness. The fact sheet is specifically designed for educational organizations and associations, including local and state school boards.
“For 115 years, we’ve made it our mission to ensure that children have access to the eyecare they need,” said Amy Pulles, President & CEO of Prevent Blindness Ohio. “By working as a team with parents, our program partners, and allied healthcare personnel, we help children take their first steps toward a lifetime of healthy vision.”
For general information on children’s eye health and safety, contact Prevent Blindness Ohio at (800) 301-2020 or pbohio.org. Or go to https://preventblindness.org/your-childs-sight/. Vision care financial assistance resources in English and Spanish may also be found at: https://preventblindness.org/vision-care-financial-assistance-information/.
About Prevent Blindness, Ohio Affiliate
Founded in 1908, Prevent Blindness is the nation’s leading volunteer eye health and safety organization dedicated to fighting blindness and saving sight. The Ohio Affiliate of Prevent Blindness serves all 88 Ohio counties, providing direct services to 1,000,000 Ohioans annually and educating millions of consumers about what they can do to protect and preserve their precious gift of sight.
For more information or to contribute, call 800-301-2020 or donate here.
Visit us at pbohio.org. Follow us: facebook.com/pbohio
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