Prevent Blindness and the National Center for Children’s Vision and Eye Health at Prevent Blindness (NCCVEH), are taking the opportunity to educate the public on a variety of children’s vision issues as excitement builds for the new *Disney/Pixar film, “Elio.” In the movie, the main character Elio wears an eye patch. While it’s unclear why Elio might be wearing one, eye patching is a recommended treatment for many vision issues, including amblyopia (sometimes called “lazy eye”), which is the most common cause of vision loss in young children.
Understanding Amblyopia: The Leading Cause of Childhood Vision Loss
Amblyopia is caused by reduced vision in one or both eyes that has not received adequate use to support its development during early childhood. Most often, it is caused by a misalignment of a child’s eyes (known as strabismus) or a difference in image quality between the two eyes from refractive error. In both cases, one eye becomes stronger, suppressing the image of the other, weaker eye. If this condition persists untreated, the weaker eye may have permanent vision loss.
Fortunately, amblyopia and strabismus are highly treatable if detected early. Eye patching may be recommended for other vision and eye health issues as well, such as eye injuries. However, compliance with children wearing their eye patches as prescribed can be challenging for families.
New Resources and Social Media Campaign Promote Eye Patch Positivity
Prevent Blindness and the NCCVEH are offering a variety of free resources on tips for eye patching, amblyopia, preventing eye injuries, and other children’s vision topics, including dedicated webpages and shareable social media graphics. Additionally, to spread awareness and help encourage positivity for eye patching, both groups are asking parents to share photos of their children wearing their eye patches on social media with #EyePatchSuperPower.
And, Prevent Blindness is debuting a new video series, “Focus on Children’s Vision,” including patient testimonials, and an eye care professional episode. Videos include:
- The Mentzer family– After a free vision screening at his daycare, provided by Prevent Blindness Iowa, Andrew was referred for an eye exam. His parents, Kyle and Lauren, share about Andrew’s patching and treatment journey.
- Zaina and Aleeya– Cousins, Zaina (age 5) and Aleeya (age 9) share their experiences with wearing eye patches, including how to wear an eye patch with glasses, going to the eye doctor, and how patching has helped their vision.
- Jayden– Now in college, Jayden shares about the positive effect that access to eye care and treatment he had as a child led to successful treatment of his amblyopia diagnosis.
- Sandra Block– Sandra S. Block, OD, MEd, MPH, president of the World Council of Optometry, professor emeritus of the Illinois College of Optometry, and Emeritus Member of the Prevent Blindness Board of Directors, discusses eye patching, amblyopia and more.
For information on eye patching, visit PreventBlindness.org/why-the-eye-patch. Amblyopia resources may be found at PreventBlindness.org/amblyopia-lazy-eye.
*Prevent Blindness and the National Center for Children’s Vision and Eye Health at Prevent Blindness are not affiliated, associated, authorized, endorsed by, or in any way officially connected with Disney or Pixar, or any of its subsidiaries or its affiliates. All product and company names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. Use of them does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them.
