Prevent Blindness joins efforts in January for National Glaucoma Awareness Month to provide patients, care partners, and professionals with free educational resources on the eye disease. Glaucoma causes loss of sight by damaging a part of the eye called the optic nerve. When glaucoma damages the optic nerve, patches of vision are lost, usually peripheral vision. Treatment cannot reverse damage that has already occurred, but it can prevent further vision loss.
Prevent Blindness has updated its Glaucoma Financial Assistance Information with new resources that provide financial assistance for glaucoma care. The directory has been reorganized to help you find the information you need quickly. Downloadable directories in English and Spanish are also available.
In this new episode of the Focus on Eye Health Expert Series, Prevent Blindness President and CEO, Jeff Todd, discusses glaucoma with Karen Allison, MD, MBA, FACS, Chief of Glaucoma at the Flaum Eye Institute, University of Rochester.
A recent study, “Prevalence of Glaucoma Among US Adults in 2022,” found that approximately 4.22 million people in the United States have glaucoma and 1.49 million people have vision-affecting glaucoma, with substantial variation in prevalence across demographic subgroups, U.S. states and counties in 2022.
Funding for this study was provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Vision Health Initiative. Study estimates were developed using data provided by the CDC Vision and Eye Health Surveillance System (VEHSS).
