ROCKVILLE, Md.—The Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) has independently produced its first public outreach campaign aimed at educating patients, policymakers and the public on the value of vision research.

Built on National Alliance for Eye and Vision Research (NAEVR) messaging and Alliance for Eye and Vision Research (AEVR) education, the effort, titled “Revealing the back of the eye with optical coherence (OCT),” is centered on the technology’s contributions to public health and the taxpayers bottom line.

This resource is a series of free-to-use five-minute videos aimed at a general audience. The short stories cover patients using OCT to help manage vision-impairing diseases like glaucoma, age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and diabetic retinopathy.

As recently as the September 14 AEVR International AMD Awareness Week 2016 Congressional Briefing, featured speaker Amir Kashani, MD, PhD discussed the NIH-funded research that led to the FDA-approved drugs injected into the eye to stabilize vision loss in wet AMD and, in some cases, improve lost vision. Kashani added that ”since OCT was also developed through NIH-funded research, sustained NIH funding has resulted in both the imaging technology to diagnose the disease and monitor wet AMD disease progression as well as the drug therapies to treat it.”

ARVO is also offering a special issue on the latest OCT research and an advocacy toolkit that can be found here. The organization will be sharing the tools on social media using the hashtag #OCTimaging. For more information, email outreach@arvo.org.