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health”. Expert groups were convened to agree on a de nition and develop a conceptual framework that articulated all the ‘ingredients’ needed to ensure people participated effectively in eye health care. Expertise was drawn from multiple eye health organisations, universities, health services, governments and community groups across Myanmar, Ethiopia, China, Cambodia, Nepal, Bangladesh, Kenya and Australia.
The de nition of ‘community engagement in eye health’ that was developed to guide the design of the CEEHAT tool was:
Community engagement in eye health care refers to behaviours people might engage in to minimise the risk of vision loss and eye disease, and/or optimise eye health and vision. People might engage in these activities in support of their own eye health, or that of their family or community. These activities include those relating to self-care and interactions with eye health services, and cut across the spectrum of care from primary prevention of eye disease, to identi cation and treatment of eye disease, to ongoing management of long-term eye condition/s. Responsibility for effective community engagement in eye health care is shared by community members and health and social care providers. Governments, eye health services, and community providers have a responsibility to facilitate and empower individuals and communities to engage effectively with eye health activities and care, and to deliver high quality and accessible programs and services. Once a sound understanding of community engagement in eye health was established, the second step in developing the CEEHAT was to construct a set of modules and questions, and re ne these through a process of expert and community consultation. The draft tool could then be eld tested and validated.
The tool was rst used in Shan State Myanmar by The Fred Hollows Foundation. The data was then used to assess the reliability and validity of the core questions and domains of the CEEHAT.
Conclusion
Today, there are still 36 million people who are blind and more than 1 billion people who live with some form of vision impairment. The prevalence of avoidable blindness and vision impairment remain unacceptably high despite the existence of simple, low-cost treatments. Universal access to, and community uptake of, these treatments remains a challenge across the world.
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Sustainable Development Goals and the World Health Organization’s World Report on Vision underscore the need for accessible, high quality health services that are developed with consumer needs at the centre. Good community eye health will be realised only when obstacles to community participation in care are understood and effectively addressed.
The new CEEHAT tool developed by The Fred Hollows Foundation, provides eye health services with a robust, standardized, validated tool for understanding what helps and what hinders people in their community, accessing eye care.
Acknowledgements
The design and validation of this tool was made possible through nancial support of The Fred Hollows Foundation.
The Community Engagement in Eye Health Conceptual Framework is available upon request. Please contact: moda@hollows.org
The Fred Hollows Foundation
The Fred Hollows Foundation is an international development organisation working to eliminate avoidable blindness. The Foundation works in more than 25 countries around the world. In 2019, The Foundation supported sight-restoring eye operations and treatments for 646,835 people, trained 68,293 surgeons, nurses, health workers and teachers, and built or renovated 24 medical facilities.
This article is published by The Fred Hollows Foundation exclusively to Eyezone Magazine. Visit: www.hollows.org
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