Working in eye health can feel a bit like running for a bus that you can’t catch. Often the problem is accelerating faster than the pace of our sector.
This is true for avoidable blindness and vision loss. By 2050, there is expected to be 1.7 billion people living with some form of avoidable vision loss. And 90% of these people live in low-to-middle income countries.
Although Australia is a developed country, we aren’t excluded from this problem. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are still three times more likely to be blind or vision impaired than other Australians.
In response to this growing global crisis, The Fred Hollows Foundation has unveiled a bold new five-year strategy.
It’s our collective call to action for the next five years, which describes the eye health situation we face, what we need to do to tackle it, and how we can get the job done.
The foundation’s 2024-2028 strategy represents a major shift in the way we will carry out our sight-restoring work.
During the past 31 years, our organisation has played a critical role in accelerating the availability of good eye health. It has addressed significant blindness and vision loss by restoring sight to more than three million people in 25 countries.
However, if we wish to address the growing burden of disease and multiply our impact over the next five years, then we must do things differently.
Treating cataract, refractive error and eliminating trachoma is important and will continue to be a part of our work.
But the central premise of this strategy is that creating sustainable systems in the countries where we work will deliver greater impact than concentrating only on immediate service delivery.
So how do we achieve sustainable health systems?
Broadly, the approach will include strengthening our advocacy and influence, leading greater collective action and focusing on the major barriers to eye health, such as critical health workforce shortages and eye health data.
Underpinning this new strategy are three high-level goals.
The first goal is to strengthen Integrated People Centred Eye Care (IPEC) to protect and restore sight to those most in need. To achieve this, The foundation will work with partners to apply IPEC best practice leading to increases in coverage and service.
It will champion IPEC’s call for integration across health and into other sectors, including education and industry, which will enable greater progress on prevention, screening, and treatment.
This will see us securing political commitment and lobbying governments to integrate eye health into broader health plans.
The second is to Advance Transformative Solutions that address key eye heath challenges. Removing key barriers, finding efficiencies, increasing quality and eliminating challenges can create transformative change in eye health systems.
For example, enriching the quality of eye health data can drive efficiency, productivity, and better insights. If you can’t accurately measure the problem, you can’t address it.
The third goal aims to tackle the challenge of scale by elevating eye health as a social, economic and development issue to unlock political will and resourcing.
The foundation will make the case in health and other sectors that eye health is a social, economic, and development issue.
For too long, eye health has been thought of as a less critical development issue. We are looking to change the perspective on this in a significant way.
The consequences of not meeting the needs of people with vision impairment are devastating.
Children with vision impairment can experience delayed motor, language, emotional, social, and cognitive development. This means they are often left behind at school, limiting their educational opportunities, and future job prospects.
Adults with vision impairment can have lower quality of life, lower rates of workforce participation and productivity, and higher rates of depression and anxiety. Older people are more at risk of falls.
Offering immediate service delivery to address the rapid acceleration of avoidable blindness can only go so far.
We need our work to empower local workforces, strengthen local health systems and provide sustainable solutions to development issues. It’s about addressing the problem, not just the symptom.
Only then will we have a fighting chance at ending the global eye health crisis.
NOTE: The Fred Hollows Foundation’s 2024-2028 strategy can be read in full at www.hollows.org/au/reports/five-year-strategy-2024-2028
About the author
Name: Ian Wishart
Qualifications: BSc, DipEd, Executive MBA, GAICD, AsiaLink Leadership Program graduate.
Affiliations: The Fred Hollows Foundation Position: CEO
Location: Melbourne
Years in industry: 35 years (in not-for-profit sector)
More reading
A hard look at surgical waste – Dr Michael Loughnan & Dr Sukhpal Sandhu
Australian eyewear tariff: How can we accept this? – David Pearson
The future of cataract surgery – A/Prof Michael Lawless
