A public-facing campaign was launched on August 25 in the UK to increase awareness of myopia and encourage parents to book an eye exam for their children.
The Global Myopia Awareness Coalition (GMAC) aimed to educate the public about the prevalence of myopia and related risks of eye health issues later in life.
Its Screen Staycation campaign coincided with the August bank holiday weekend and encouraged families to take a break from screen use.
Matt Oerding, UK campaign lead for GMAC, told Optician: ‘Our campaign is about public awareness and getting parents, healthcare providers, teachers, school nurses, or anybody who may be the first to spot myopia in a child, aware that there’s something they can do for these kids.’
Oerding said organisers of the campaign wanted to get parents and children into optical practices and asking about myopia treatment.
‘While the industry and eye care professionals know a lot about myopia management, the public doesn’t yet. We need to drive more awareness so that the conversation is being had with optometrists about treatment,’ he added.
Eye health coalition
GMAC started in the US in 2019 with the aim of campaigning in different countries. The UK stood out as a market where there was a need for public messaging. Additionally, the UK had a good infrastructure of optometrists who were qualified to treat myopia. ‘If we spark that conversation with a parent, we can be confident that optometrists in the UK have the tools and training to treat myopia,’ Oerding said.
Oerding has run myopia clinics in the US via his company Treehouse Eyes where he is CEO and co-founder. Treehouse Eyes staff reported that the number one issue was when parents would come in and ask, ‘Why haven’t I heard about myopia before?’ He decided to speak to CooperVision, EssilorLuxottica, Hoya, Alcon and Johnson & Johnson, who all agreed public awareness of myopia was an issue. In 2018 at the American Academy of Optometry, 12 companies came together and nine of them created a coalition that would be not-for-profit nor commercially-oriented by talking about products.
Oerding said: ‘Its sole aim was to fill that gap we saw, which was public awareness. In 20 years in the industry, I was shocked that these companies came together in this way. They are competitors, ultimately, but they put in funding, resources and people to create the board.’ It now has 20 companies, charities and associations signed up, including the World Council of Optometry.
Layers of education
Before launching GMAC’s UK campaign, Oerding said it had learned from campaigns in the US that there was a delicate balance with parents about guilt, which he added was a powerful motivator. ‘Parents already feel guilty about a lot of things and so we want to inspire them versus make them feel guilty about this being yet another thing they’ve done wrong as a parent. We try to flip it and say, “This is something you can do for your child that maybe wasn’t available for you when you were a child.” So, maybe a tiny bit of guilt can work, but you can’t leverage that too much because parents will shut down.
‘The second thing is, we have to start with a little bit of education. We did a survey of 1,500 parents in the UK about their knowledge base of short-sightedness, as it’s often called in the UK, and it’s really low. You can’t just start talking about taking myopic children to the eye doctor, you’ve got to start a couple layers above that with some basic education about what myopia is and give them a little bit of information so that they can start to process it. This is new information for almost all of them,’ he said.
Myopia influencers
A social media strategy was decided on as the most effective way of increasing awareness about a healthcare related topic among parents. Influencers with relevant followers have been paid by GMAC to post about myopia on social media platforms.
These included GP Dr Stephanie Ooi, optometrist Dr Keyur Patel and musician Myleene Klass. GMAC chose these influencers because they were well placed to reach the 30 to 50-year-old parents who have school-aged children. It was personal to Ooi and Klass too because both live with myopia and have children who have or were potentially at risk of having it.
This was important to GMAC as the posts were more authentic than other sponsored posts influencers might do. Patel and Klass took part in a broadcast day before the bank holiday weekend and completed 15 interviews, including live and pre-recorded ones for the BBC. All three influencers posted content about the Screen Staycation campaign.
Oerding said: ‘When you look at traditional methods, like TV and radio, those can be pretty effective, but often when it comes to healthcare people are looking for information from someone they know or trust. Taking an influencer strategy made sense to us. It’s also a really cost-effective way to get your message out there. We launched that in the US three years ago with our first campaign, measured the results and we’ve seen great success, so we’ve continued that strategy.
‘We worked with our agency in London to look at the UK marketplace. One thing that was important for GMAC was to customise our approach in any market we go to, but the agency really felt that similar approach of using influencers would work in the UK. Our early returns look good. I think the biggest difference for the UK is the importance of GPs in this conversation, which is less relevant in the US. So, having not only a parent and an optometry influencer but a GP influencer with a big social following, who also was passionate about this was important.’
Attitudes to eye health
Key messages of the campaign included how myopia prevalence was increasing and impacting one in six children in the UK but that it is treatable. Another point was myopia onset could be delayed or potentially prevented if children increase the amount of time spent outdoors. The third message was to take children for an eye exam. ‘It’s not good enough just to get vision screening in school, that comprehensive eye test for your school-aged child is really important,’ Oerding said.
The campaign focused on messaging about screen time because, Oerding explained, it was one that parents connected with the most. He explained that axial length and elongation was not interesting to parents, but they were worried about screen time.
‘Anytime you’re trying to send a message to the public, you’re looking for what’s going to resonate and break through with them. It was screen time in the US and we confirmed it in our UK parent research too. It’s a topic that’s hot, they’re interested in and we knew it was a way to connect with them, get their attention and start a conversation.’
During research, GMAC looked at awareness and attitudes to eye health by asking how much parents knew and identified knowledge gaps. GMAC also exposed them to potential campaign messaging to get feedback on what connected. Oerding said: ‘The research had some really interesting findings, some of them actually worse than the US in terms of the indoor time. We saw that 36% of parents said their kids were spending upwards of five hours a day on screens, which is horrifying. We saw very few parents who actually knew there was something they could do about myopia other than just correct vision with glasses and spectacle lenses.’
Another area that was identified was the use of the terms myopia or short-sightedness. GMAC has strategically chosen to focus on the term myopia because it was the correct clinical term for the disease.
Oerding said: ‘In our UK public messaging, you’ll often see, “Myopia, also known as near-sightedness or short-sightedness.” We want to make that link and most parents know the term short-sightedness but they don’t always know what it means. Does it mean I can’t see distance? Does it mean I can’t see near? There’s a lot of confusion even over that term.’ He added that the campaign sought to debunk the myth that spectacles will solve the problem. ‘A key message for us is to separate treating the symptoms with treating the underlying disease.’
Next steps
In the US, GMAC ran several myopia campaigns, including one about gaming that had a similar theme to the screen time messaging in the UK. GMAC partnered with gamers who stream on platforms like Twitch and shared myopia messages with their audience, even encouraging breaks from playing. Teachers have also been used as influencers in the US because, Oerding said, they were often the first ones to spot signs of a child struggling or squinting in the classroom.
GMAC has started to look at the effectiveness of its messaging in the UK in relation to reach and engagement among the public, as well as how the profession supported it. Oerding added that planning was under way for 2023.
‘I’ve been in this industry a long time and I don’t think we can wait 20 years, which is what’s normal in optometry for something new to take hold. We’ve got a whole generation of kids now that we can help with myopia treatment and we need to. We owe it to this generation of kids to do something about it,’ Oerding concluded.