Prevent Blindness has declared August as Children’s Eye Health and Safety Month, emphasizing the importance of vision and eye health in child development. The initiative aims to educate parents, caregivers, and professionals, and encourage advocacy support of state and community children's eye health programs. Below is a summary of materials being featured this month on Prevent Blindness.

General Resources:

• Prevent Blindness offers free resources, including fact sheets, toolkits, videos, and social media graphics on children’s vision topics that are applicable from infancy through adolescence.
• The National Center for Children’s Vision and Eye Health offers “resources on getting your child ready for school, taking a child to an eye doctor, preparing your child for wearing glasses or contact lenses, tips for preventing eye injuries, and much more.”

Resources on Specific Conditions:

• The Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP) Education and Support Program, supported by Regeneron, provides fact sheets, graphics, a dedicated webpage, and a comprehensive video series for the first ROP Awareness Week.
• With support from UnitedHealthcare, the “Diabetes + The Eyes: Vision Health in Youth” website and fact sheet in English and Spanish supplies information for parents and caregivers to protect vision in youth with diabetes.
• The Focus on Eye Health Expert Series includes free episodes on:
  • Children’s Vision and Eye Health
  • Children’s Vision and Parent Advocacy
  • Partnering with School Nurses for Children’s Vision and Eye Health
• The Emerging Eye Health Issues in Young Children webinar from the Office of Head Start’s National Center for Health, Behavioral Health, and Safety includes several expert speakers and information on myopia prevention.

Policy:

• The Early Detection of Vision Impairments for Children (EDVI) Act “is landmark, bipartisan legislation that seeks to establish the first ever federal program for children’s vision which will provide grants for states and communities to improve children’s vision and eye health through coordinated systems of care.”  
• State-by-state snapshots on children’s vision screening requirements provide important children’s vision care data and are available online.