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It’s becoming more broadly accepted among ECPs that myopia will find a place as one of the major public health challenges that professionals come across. It is estimated that 50 percent of the population will be impacted by myopia by the year 2050 (due mainly to lifestyle factors), with 20 percent of the myopic patients having high myopia (when urgent action is needed).

Rising myopia increases the risk of blindness (due to high myopia), and also raises the socio-economic burden associated with myopia complications, thus burdening health care systems around the world.

“Ophthalmic companies and eye health associations recognize this need, but public awareness of this issue is limited, making it difficult for eye doctors and allied health care professionals to discuss potential treatment options for myopic children,” as the Global Myopia Awareness Coalition (GMAC) noted.

This began to change in late 2018 when an array of companies and associations addressed the opportunity around working together to increase awareness of childhood myopia, as well as encouraging parents to talk about treatment options for childhood myopia with their health professional.

GMAC, building upon this broad-based interest shown, was officially established in January 2019. While the initial support came from 10 companies, today the organization has grown to have the support of 17 different companies and associations that are working together with a singular mission around myopia awareness. GMAC is now established as an advisory board within the World Council of Optometry.

Perhaps surprisingly, given the current widespread interest in myopia management, as recently as 10 or 15 years ago there were few vision care professionals and others outside of the research community talking about myopia.

“In 2015, nobody was talking about myopia management. It was on the fringe,” noted Matt Oerding, a GMAC board member. Oerding also is a co-founder along with Gary Gerber, OD, of Treehouse Eyes, the first health care practice dedicated exclusively to treating myopic children. “You had people like Dr. Tom Aller [of San Bruno, Calif.] and a handful of others who were on the clinical or academic side who would talk about myopia, but you would have been hard pressed to find myopia as a topic at a big meeting.”

Oerding points to three factors that have helped bring myopia awareness and myopia management to the forefront.

The first factor, he said, is the approval of vision products specifically for myopia management, including the MiSight lens from CooperVision, which was launched initially in Europe, Australia and other countries.

“You had to get approved specifically for the treatment of progression of myopia in children… I certainly think that having products get regulatory approval, even outside the U.S. helped [increase awareness]. That was a big thing,” Oerding says.

The second factor has been the publication of scientific research addressing myopia and myopia management. “Five or six years ago, there weren’t a lot of great studies out there that showed the efficacy of myopia treatment,” he said. “And really over the last few years, we’ve had more studies [around myopia] than I can count, including the ATOM 1 and ATOM 2 studies out of Asia that looked at the use of atropine [as a treatment protocol] and some of the ortho-K studies” which looked at efficacy and the benefits of treatment.

“It’s one thing to say it’s a need and another to say can we do something about it. I think we’ve had a number of studies that started in 2016-2017 that have helped,” he said.

The third contributing factor was the launch of Treehouse Eyes, the first and only health care business dedicated exclusively to treating myopic children. The new practice model debuted outside of Washington, D.C., by Gerber and Oerding. There are now 55 eyecare practices around the U.S. that are working with the founders and that have adopted elements of the Treehouse Eyes model.

“I think this was a big shock to people that we opened dedicated centers focused on treating myopic kids in late 2016,” Oerding said. “There were a lot of people saying, ‘Well, why would you do that?’ This sparked a conversation about the need for treatment. People began to understand the magnitude of this issue in terms of how many millions of children are myopic. I think we played a small role in helping to spark that conversation [around myopia] as well.”

Another factor that has raised awareness of myopia management—among both parents and ECPs —is the work being done by GMAC. One of the first steps the organization took was to conduct a survey in August 2019 to uncover a benchmark among U.S. parents with school-aged children and their awareness of myopia and what they knew about it. “We repeated that survey in August 2021 and the pleasing thing for us is that we’ve moved the dial in terms of parents taking myopia more seriously. More parents said, ‘Yeah, this is something I should be concerned about. It is something that I want to ask the doctor about.’”

He added, “So we still have a long way to go, but we feel like we’re making progress in moving the ball forward.”