InfantSEE: Improving vision health of infants all across America

Data collected by the American Optometric Association (AOA) from 14,000 InfantSEE® assessments conducted during 2009 and 2010, indicated the cause for concern has increased from one in 14 in 2005 to one in seven in 2010. This finding reveals a growing need for early vision examination in infants. The data also identified several groups at greater risk.

Through InfantSEE®, optometrists provide a one-time, comprehensive eye and vision assessment to infants in their first year of life, between the ages of 6 and 12 months, offering early detection of potential eye and vision problems at no cost regardless of income or access to insurance coverage.

InfantSEE® addresses the ways in which providing comprehensive eye and vision assessments will ensure that the infant vision health is developing properly while at the same time providing assurance to mothers that their infant is developing in a healthy manner with respect to their vision needs. Furthermore, InfantSEE® seeks to provide health promotion and education to mothers about vision health in hopes to decrease health disparities and reduce potential health expenditures.

Utilizing various social marketing tools and non-traditional outreach efforts to address health education and promotion, the goal of the InfantSEE® program was to gain further knowledge about what means the rural public uses to take advantage of a collaborative program such as InfantSEE® while at the same time providing needed vision assessments to ensure healthy vision development in the infant as well as providing reassurance to mothers that their infant has healthy vision development.