Funding
Agency: EyeSight Foundation of Alabama and Pfizer
Project Identifier: None
Principal Investigator: Cynthia Owsley, PhD, MSPH
A factor underlying their higher eye disease and blindness rates is that African Americans, especially older adults, are less likely to receive routine eye care, when newly emerging eye conditions and vision impairment could be detected and treated in a timely fashion. This is likely due at least in part to African Americans’ lower eye health literacy including poor knowledge of basic symptoms, risk factors, and treatments available for common eye diseases and conditions and their perception that there are numerous barriers to receiving eye care. In this project we will implement a culturally sensitive eye health educational intervention designed and delivered to older African Americans within their own communities by specially trained peer counselors. This educational curriculum focuses on several domains including understanding the personal implications for routine and preventative eye care, common eye problems in older adults, symptoms and their relationship to seeking eye care, communicating needs and concerns to the doctor, problem solving in removing barriers to care, and the critical nature of compliance to treatments recommended by the doctor and strategies for maintaining compliance.
The questions to be addressed are: (1) Does the educational intervention increase the number of older African Americans who seek and receive comprehensive eye care? (2) Does the educational intervention improve knowledge, attitudes and beliefs about vision, glaucoma, other common eye problems, and eye care? (3) Does the educational intervention reduce the perceived barriers to eye care?
