Opinion: Awareness-raising is key to deliver eye health for all by 2030

In 2021, all 193 member states of the United Nations General Assembly passed a new resolution to deliver eye health for all by 2030. The resolution calls on governments to implement a domestic national strategy for eye care, incorporate eye care into their country’s journey to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, and drive new financial investment and resources to provide eye care services at home.

The integration of vision care within the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals marks a milestone moment for the vision care sector. With a renewed focus on delivering eye health, there has never been a better time to implement strategies that accelerate access to sustainable care.

In 2019, with the support of our partners, EssilorLuxottica, a global leader in ophthalmic lenses, frames, and sunglasses, launched a detailed road map on how to eliminate uncorrected poor vision in a generation. Affecting 2.7 billion people, 90% of whom live in low- and middle-income countries where there is little to no access to or awareness of vision care, the issue we face as a sector is big but relatively uncomplicated. Investment and action are needed in four key areas: creating sustainable access points that can serve 90% of the population in need; funding for free or subsidized services; innovation to accelerate affordability and cost to serve; and awareness-raising to build demand for services and investment in the cause.

Progress has been made across sustainable access creation, and free and subsidized services, and in recent years we have seen positive strides in innovation with the introduction of technologies like tele-refraction, using technology to remotely connect rural patients with an optometrist to confirm the diagnosis of their vision screening. Where we are still lacking is in driving demand for these services through awareness-raising. Together with our partners, EssilorLuxottica has created access to vision care for 500 million people within one day’s travel and equipped 10% of that number with a pair of glasses, which for many is their first pair.

It’s only right that services have been established to deliver care first, but as the sector looks for more ways to expand this access to more people, we must make awareness-raising an equal priority if we’re to reach the 2030 target.

There are unique challenges when it comes to raising awareness and education around refractive errors. One in three people is affected by uncorrected refractive errors. Poor vision is indiscriminate; from children who do not recognize they see differently from their peers to adults who find ways to compensate or simply accept deteriorating vision as an inevitable part of aging, as well as those held back by cultural stigmas around wearing glasses.

So where have we seen success?

The See Now campaign created in partnership with The Fred Hollows Foundation and others, strives to increase awareness and drive public mobilization on ending avoidable blindness and vision impairment, thereby increasing the number of people accessing eye care services and eyeglasses.

With this campaign, we saw that where there is trust, star power is still a pull and with the right execution tactics, channel strategy, and implementation partners, we can achieve great reach.

But we won’t always have the luxury of a passionate and trusted celebrity partner, so what are some other ways we can champion vision care in a crowded landscape of health promotion and messaging?

We’ve been partnering with local governments to pilot campaigns that simultaneously promote complementary health issues to great success.  

For example, during COVID-19, EssilorLuxottica’s primary vision care entrepreneurs in Kenya known as Eye Rafikis, collaborated with the Government of Bungoma county, to provide free vision screenings, as well as raise awareness of good vision and COVID-19 hygiene practices to the community in the county.

Conducted with safety guidelines in place, over 35% of those screened needed glasses and were able to purchase them at affordable rates from the Eye Rafikis. At the screening, important information about good hygiene practices and safety measures — including proper hand-washing techniques — was shared with the community, tackling two important issues at once. While still small scale, we see great potential in these collaborations.  

Where do we go from here?

It is important that awareness efforts go beyond one-off campaigns and incite behavior change around vision health. This takes commitment and investment. In our road map outlining how uncorrected poor vision can be eliminated in a generation, it is estimated that $4.5 billion of investment is needed to increase awareness of poor vision and its socioeconomic impact between now and 2050. This is second only to the amount needed to provide free or subsided services, $6.2 billion. To put it into further context, the amount it will take to create sustainable access points that can serve 90% of the population in need is $2.4 billion and the amount needed to invest in innovation is $0.7 billion.

While the challenge we face as a sector is undoubtedly huge, with the mandate to achieve universal vision care now on every country’s agenda, the task is simple. How can we leverage the expertise of our stakeholders in the public and private sectors to raise awareness and drive demand for services together? The time to act is now.