by Daniel Parker, RDPFS Contributor:
Prevent Blindness hosted its nineteenth annual Eyes on Capitol Hill (EOCH) advocacy day in Washington, D.C. on May 16, 2024. EOCH’s primary goal is to advocate for increased funding for vision-centered public health programs and surveillance efforts. This year’s event, in which I participated, was focused on securing funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s Vision and Eye Health Program, and passage of the bipartisan Early Detection of Visual Impairments (EDVI) Act of 2024, covered in a previous issue of this Bulletin. This legislation would set up the first federal program addressing children’s vision and eye health. According to Sara Brown, director of Government Affairs at Prevent Blindness, the event attracted 80 advocates from 23 states who held 60 meetings with legislative staff. This was the first in-person EOCH since the pandemic, and the fourth to include graduates of the ASPECT (Advocacy, Support, Perspective, Empowerment, Communication, and Training) Patient Engagement Program which “aims to strengthen our patient empowerment efforts for vision into a coordinated program that engages the individual in a more comprehensive manner.” Advocates consisted of patients with vision loss, family members, medical providers and other allies. Julie Grutzmacher, Prevent Blindness Director of Patient Advocacy and Population Health Initiatives, who also heads the ASPECT program, observed in an interview that the event “helped a lot of people who were less familiar with advocacy an opportunity to really know what it’s like and to participate as a team,” adding that “it was less overwhelming for a lot of people and [less] inaccessible than it might have otherwise been.” She reflected on what she saw as the success of EOCH for people already having advocacy experience, commenting that “it was an important moment in time to be with other people who had a shared interest in changing policies and advocating on behalf of those with sight loss and blindness, to be together in community. For that many people to be there and to be engaged in this all at once I think was pretty energizing for a lot of folks.” For general information on the event, visit the Prevent Blindness webpage on the Eyes on Capitol Hill (EOCH) advocacy day.
