2025 World Sight Day
October 9 @ 9:00 am - 3:00 pm - EDT
Prevent Blindness is uniting with the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB) and its member organizations around the world in support of “World Sight Day.” This year’s World Sight Day theme, “Love Your Eyes,” will focus on the need for eye care that is accessible, available, and affordable for everyone, everywhere.
Prevent Blindness is planning a series of events and program partnerships on World Sight Day on Oct. 9, 2025. With support from the Prevention of Blindness Society of Metropolitan Washington, Prevent Blindness will host a vision screening and a Congressional Briefing that are free and open to the general public.
World Sight Day 2025 Congressional Briefing
As part of World Sight Day 2025, Prevent Blindness will host a Congressional briefing focused on the critical role of children’s vision and eye health in ensuring readiness for learning, development, and lifelong well-being.
Summary
Is the United States as prepared as it should be to protect this generation’s vision and eye health?
Vision is essential for a child’s development, impacting cognitive and motor skills, social and emotional engagement, and psychological well-being. Yet the U.S. lacks a dedicated national effort to ensure children have access to early intervention and detection services. Without early detection, vision problems can hinder learning, limit opportunities, and increase the risk of serious eye diseases in adulthood, including macular degeneration, retinal detachment, and diabetes-related eye disease.
Early detection makes a difference. It connects children with timely diagnoses, treatment plans, and—when needed—rehabilitation services and assistive devices. This is especially critical for children with lifelong conditions such as rare eye diseases or inherited disorders.
This World Sight Day, the briefing will examine the strengths and gaps in our current system of children’s vision and eye health care, from research to public health data to existing programs, and discuss policy solutions to prevent an avoidable crisis of vision loss and blindness in the U.S.
World Sight Day Vision Screening and Eye Health Education Event
October 9th
Rayburn Foyer, 9am – 3pm ET
World Sight Day Congressional Briefing
October 9th
Rayburn 2044, 11:30am – 1pm ET
Scheduled Speakers: Will be updated shortly
To attend either or both World Sight Day events on October 9th,
The Congressional Briefing will include information and updates on the Early Detection of Vision Impairments for Children (EDVI) Act. The EDVI Act, co-sponsored by Congressional Vision Caucus (CVC) co-chairs, U.S. Representative Gus Bilirakis (FL-12) and U.S. Representative Marc Veasey (TX-33), is legislation that seeks to establish the first federal program for children’s vision, providing grants for states and communities to improve children’s vision and eye health through coordinated systems of care. The EDVI Act is currently endorsed by more than 90 organizations across the country.
