Under the spotlight: Eye health needs assessment results

Bill Harvey: Last year, we talked about what an eye health needs assessment was and its intentions (Optician 09.05.14). Now a year later can you tell us about the results from your efforts in the West Midlands?

Dr Nizar Hirji: Let me begin with a little background. Walsall’s Strategic Needs Analysis (JSNA) identified demographic, lifestyle characteristics, and health determinants in the local population. However, it made little direct reference to eye health, save for mention of visual impairment in about 100 school children on Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust’s Disability database. It was thus absolutely necessary to gather local knowledge of eye health in relation to the perceived, current and predicted needs of the resident population, and then to use this local knowledge to influence current eye care services, and commissioning of future eye care services, to better manage avoidable sight loss. To make this task more manageable it was done with particular attention to high risk groups, looking at existing data and concentrating on the main causes of sight loss. This was the initiative known as EHNA.