Happy May! As this month marks both UV Awareness Month and Healthy Vision Month, a number of organizations are offering tips and resources to help you educate your patients.
Prevent Blindness has declared May as UV Awareness Month in an effort to help educate the public on the importance of UV eye protection. The organization offers a dedicated page of their website with information for patients on how UV rays can damage their eyes and how they can protect themselves. Additionally, Prevent Blindness offers free downloadable eye health and safety fact sheets on Sunglasses and an Ultraviolet Light Awareness Quiz.
And with May also being Healthy Vision Month, the National Eye Institute (NEI) is encouraging everyone to make eye health a priority with a special emphasis on women. According to NEI, women make up two-thirds of all people living with blindness or visual impairment from age-related macular degeneration (AMD), glaucoma and cataract. A reported 2.7 million U.S. women aged 40 and older are blind or visually impaired.
To help educate women about keeping their eyes healthy, NEI offers up five steps to preserve eye health, as well as patient stories and a social media campaign. For Healthy Vision Month, NEI also offers free downloadable fact sheets (in both English and Spanish), Facebook cover photos, web buttons, infographics and posters, as well as a downloadable Healthy Vision Month Toolkit.
And the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) is also putting a spotlight on women's eye health in May, and offering up tips via their patient-facing EyeSmart® website.
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