The Cost of Visual Impairment: Purposes, Perspectives, and Guidance

The Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) Workshop on the Economic Burden of Vision Loss was held on September 17, 2007, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, under the auspices of ARVO and the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness. The workshop’s goal was to develop consensus on the best practices for measuring the burden of vision loss. The meeting was organized around a discussion of papers that had recently been published describing various methods of calculating the burden associated with vision loss. A result of the workshop is the publication of the results of the consensus-building process that was begun at the meeting and continued with correspondence and revisions of the statements regarding consensus after the meeting.