Improving Access to Eye Care among Persons at High Risk of Glaucoma

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Component A: Improving Glaucoma Detection and Management. The purpose of Component A is to conduct implementation research to effectively plan, develop, implement, and evaluate community-based interventions to improve access and utilization of eye care services to promote the detection and follow-up of glaucoma in high-risk populations. Some examples include African Americans over age 40 years, Asians, older people [aged 65+ years] especially Hispanics, those with a family history of glaucoma, and those with diabetes.The purpose of Component B is to design and refine components to establish a functional, comprehensive national glaucoma and vision health surveillance system. The aim of this research is to harmonize methods to assess vision loss, assess vision loss, activity performance, and access to eye care in national and state level surveys, promote the implementation of the surveillance system in conjunction with other public health entities, and provide data to providers and other end users for implementation of policies and programs. This component will be characterized by the capacity to evaluate innovative eye and vision health measures, assess additional data for inclusion, and to propose a plan to integrate, implement, and disseminate information from this surveillance system. This system will be highly accessible to decision makers to enable government agencies, academic institutions, and other interested parties to monitor the burden and trends of glaucoma, vision loss; risk factors for vision loss; social, economic, racial, and ethnic disparities; and to establish effective public health interventions to address problems of access and utilization. This surveillance system will also be instrumental in monitoring trends in the Healthy People 2020 healthy vision objectives.

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