Persons using assistive technology might not be able to fully access information in this file. For assistance, please send e-mail to: mmwrq@cdc.gov. Type 508 Accommodation and the title of the report in the subject line of e-mail.
Healthy Vision Month --- May 2005
May is Healthy Vision Month. In the United States, an estimated 80 million persons have potentially blinding
eye diseases, one million are blind, and 3 million have low vision
(1). The leading causes of blindness and uncorrectable
vision loss in the United States are age-related eye diseases, including macular degeneration, glaucoma, cataract, and diabetic retinopathy. The number of U.S. residents aged
>40 years with age-related eye diseases is expected to increase
by approximately 40% by 2020 (2).
Vision objectives are a new focus area in Healthy People
2010. Healthy Vision 2010 addresses the vision objectives
that include visual impairment, regular eye examinations for children and adults, vision screening for preschool children, injury prevention, and vision rehabilitation
(1). Healthy Vision 2010 materials designed to educate the public and
health-care providers are available at http://www.healthyvision2010.org.
CDC collaborates with the National Eye Institute through
Healthy People 2010 and the National Eye Health
Education Program. In addition, CDC has developed a program to increase public and professional awareness of efforts to
reduce visual impairment and eye diseases. CDC also engages in applied public health
research to enhance eye health.
References
US Department of Health and Human Services. Healthy people 2010 (conference ed, in 2 vols). Washington, DC: US Department of
Health and Human Services; 2000. Available at
http://www.health.gov/healthypeople.
Eye Diseases Prevalence Research Group. Causes and prevalence of visual impairment among adults in the United States. Arch
Ophthalmol 2004;122:477--85.
Use of trade names and commercial sources is for identification only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services.References to non-CDC sites on the Internet are
provided as a service to MMWR readers and do not constitute or imply
endorsement of these organizations or their programs by CDC or the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services. CDC is not responsible for the content
of pages found at these sites. URL addresses listed in MMWR were current as of
the date of publication.
Disclaimer
All MMWR HTML versions of articles are electronic conversions from ASCII text
into HTML. This conversion may have resulted in character translation or format errors in the HTML version.
Users should not rely on this HTML document, but are referred to the electronic PDF version and/or
the original MMWR paper copy for the official text, figures, and tables.
An original paper copy of this issue can be obtained from the Superintendent of Documents,
U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO), Washington, DC 20402-9371; telephone: (202) 512-1800.
Contact GPO for current prices.
**Questions or messages regarding errors in formatting should be addressed to
mmwrq@cdc.gov.
