Massachusetts Pilot: National Center For Children's Vision And Eye Health

A Prevent Blindness America grant from the Maternal and Child Health Bureau has supported the establishment of the National Center for Children's Vision and Eye Health and a National Expert Panel. The Center's focus is on three core elements: (1) To provide leadership in the development of best practices and guidelines for a public health infrastructure, and statewide strategies that ensure a continuum of vision care for children (2) To determine mechanisms for advancing state-based performance improvement systems, screening guidelines, and uniform data collection and reporting (3) To work in collaboration with Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Ohio to develop and implement a statewide strategy for vision care for young children, establish quality improvement strategies, and determine mechanisms for improving data systems and reporting of children's vision services.

This pilot provides an opportunity to reconvene the coalition responsible for Massachusetts' landmark 2004 legislative mandate for Preschool Vision Programs, expand membership, assess current practice and develop new programs and systems to support comprehensive vision care for children. Since May 2010, more than forty individuals from the fields of optometry, ophthalmology, pediatrics, family practice, nursing, education, government, and public health, as well as parents and advocates, have been contributing to the Massachusetts initiative as members of Specialty and Advisory Working Groups of the MA Pilot. The project is currently in a situation analysis phase and will be moving towards solution development and rollout of new systems, pilots and programs during the next 18 months.