In an effort to improve eye health awareness, the CDC launched a new vision and eye health surveillance system and database. The new system gives the public tools to better understand vision care in America.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in close collaboration with their partners, has organized Contact Lens Health Week as a strategy to increase public awareness and promote healthy contact lens wear and care. 

Rep. Jeff Denham led 7 members of Congress in a letter to the FTC. The Congressmen emphasize the unfair burdens to doctors of optometry and lack of enforcement of patient safety concerns in the proposed changes in the Contact Lens Rule. Read the full text of the letter here. 

July 16, 2018

Healio News – Outgoing American Optometric Association President Chris Quinn, OD, in his final presidential address to the House of Delegates during Optometry’s Meeting, explained how the group is continuing to work to develop an accrediting system for postgraduate education.

Quinn told the delegates that the AOA is working with the American Academy of Optometry, the Association of Schools and Colleges of Optometry and the Association of Regulatory Boards of Optometry, “to create an independent, credible accreditor of CE consistent with the principles adopted by the profession in Dallas at the CE summit held in 2016, modeled after other health care professions like medicine, dentistry, osteopathy, pharmacy and podiatry.”

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July 16, 2018

Healio News – “We are interested in becoming the world leader in eye health,” Johnson & Johnson Vision’s head of contact lens research and development, David Turner, PhD, said at a company-sponsored press conference here at Optometry’s Meeting.

“We are focused on delivering outstanding products for all of the unmet needs,” he said. “We have great capabilities internally, but we look outside for the very best technology and science to bring into our next generation of products. We try to create products that are better and change the quality of our patients’ lives."

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Senator Heidi Heitkamp sent a letter to the FTC raising concerns about online contact lens distributors not requiring customers to have a valid prescription. Senator Heitkamp outlines several of the dangers of this activity. The full text of the letter is below, and can be viewed here as well.

Senator John Hoeven wrote a letter to the FTC voicing his concerns that the proposed changes to the Contact Lens Rule would unfairly burden small optometry practices in his home state and urging the commission to reconsider the rule. The full text of the letter is below, and can be viewed here as well.

Senator David Perdue wrote a letter to the FTC urging that they reconsider their proposed changes to the Contact Lens Rule that would unnecessarily hinder small optometry practices across the country. The full text of the letter is below, and can be viewed here as well.  

The Executive Director of the National Consumers League wrote a letter to the FTC, recommending that the agency requires all contact lens prescribers to post a sign in their offices noting that patients have a right to a copy of their contact lens prescription immediately after their fitting. The full text of the letter can be viewed here.

Senator Rand Paul wrote a letter to the FTC voicing his concerns with the proposed changes to the Contact Lens Rule and the unfair burden that would be placed on small optometry practices. The full text of the letter is below, and the letter can be viewed here.