Prevent Blindness, Ohio Affiliate

The mission of Prevent Blindness is to prevent blindness and preserve sight. The vision of the Ohio Affiliate of Prevent Blindness (PBO) is to help Ohioans enjoy good sight for life. PBO is an affiliate of Prevent Blindness, the country's second-oldest national voluntary health organization. PBO serves as a consumer advocate for eye health and safety and our main emphasis is to serve those at highest risk for vision loss – preschool age children, older adults, minority populations and other individuals at risk for eye injuries at home, work and play. PBO promotes early detection and prompt professional treatment. Finding vision problems early is critical, when treatment is most successful and further vision loss can be prevented.

Prevent Blindness promotes eye health and safety while working to find the cures for blinding eye diseases. Our mission is carried out through the following programs.

Early Detection and Treatment - Early detection and prompt, professional treatment are essential in halting eye diseases such as amblyopia and glaucoma. PBO’s vision training and screening programs enable thousands of volunteers and providers of primary health care to detect potentially blinding eye diseases and refer individuals for professional treatment early, when it is most effective.

Eye Health and Safety Education - PBO offers workplace wellness programming, educational exhibits for museums and libraries, grades PreK-12 classroom lesson plans, and speakers that provide eye health and safety facts to all ages to help them take good care of their gift of sight. Our website, social media and public media messaging reach nearly 100 million each year.

Vision Advocacy - PBO advocates for all Ohio citizens regarding issues of vision safety in regards to fireworks safety, vision and safe driving, access to eye health care, and providing policy makers with the information they need to fight the growing future problem of vision loss in Ohio’s senior population.

Research - PBO is committed to educating key groups about the growth of vision problems and the important role that research, public health, clinicians, and the patients themselves play in reducing unnecessary vision loss. PBO expands eye health education and vision research through our Young Investigator Student Fellowship Awards for Female Scholars in Vision Research. Past fellows have worked on projects that will have future impact on early detection of glaucoma, regeneration of retinal cells impacting Age related Macular Degeneration, and the impact of nutrition on vision preservation. PBO funds three to six Student Fellowship Awards for Female Scholars in Vision Research each year. This grant provides support for scientific research investigating public health issues related to the burden of illness of eye-related health and safety. All research grants promote the core mission of PBO - preventing blindness and preserving sight.

PBO is a well-run organization and is one of only 40 nonprofits among Ohio's 37,000+ nonprofit organizations to be awarded OANO’s Standards for Excellence Seal for demonstrating accountability and ethical standards (as of 11/1/2019).

Our business strategy is to enhance existing systems of care by training, certifying, and equipping those who serve the needy to provide sight-saving programming to their constituents. This approach supports sustainability and ownership of the service among those implementing and receiving it.

PBO’s programs are evidence-based and developed in concert with the Prevent Blindness America Scientific Advisory Committee, which assures accuracy of information presented, literacy appropriateness for target populations, and assures health equity in delivery to people of all ages, genders, races, ethnicities, and socio-economic status. All clients receive the same quality services and products, eliminating vision health disparities among medically disadvantaged populations.

Prevent Blindness partners with more than 1,500 schools, childcare centers, senior centers, social service organizations and healthcare facilities across the state of Ohio and provides them with vision assessment training and tools to identify people in need of vision care.

PBO is the only statewide organization that has a certified vision screener training program that employs evidence-based standards developed by Prevent Blindness America and its National Center for Children’s Vision and Eye Health and National Center for Vision and Population Health.

Through the generosity and collaboration of our friends in optometry, ophthalmology, the vision care industry, and the pharmaceutical industry, PBO has created an innovative health care solution and an important preventive care impact that is the largest statewide “virtual free clinic” for indigent eye care anywhere in the United States.

We serve all 88 Ohio counties, providing direct services to more than 1,000,000 Ohioans annually and educating millions of consumers about what they can do to protect and preserve their precious gift of sight. We save the sight of disadvantaged Ohioans by providing 5,000 needy residents with donated comprehensive eye exams, eyeglasses, medications, surgeries, and follow-up care each year. Annually, we train, certify and equip 1,200 volunteers that provide evidence-based vision screenings to more than 200,000 Ohioans each year.

PBO makes improvements to our programming to ensure effectiveness and efficiency. We will continue our programming in eye health education, advocacy, and early disease identification for Ohioans at high-risk of losing their sight. Working with our partners, our strategy is to serve as a catalyst for long-term systems change, making healthy vision a part of healthy living.