Vision loss and blindness pose a significant economic burden on the United States. Public health researchers at the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago confirmed the substantial economic hardship in a recently published cost estimate for the year 2017 and indicated that vision-loss resource allocation will likely differ by state due to the varied composition of per-person costs. Study participants included those who answered “yes” to the question, Are you blind or do you have serious difficulty seeing even with glasses? “Based on that, we estimated that the total burden was $134.2 billion,” said David B. Rein, PhD, a program area director overseeing public health analytics at NORC’s Public Health department. Read More