COVD is the College of Optometrists in Vision Development. It is an international, non-profit membership association for eye care professionals. This includes optometrists and students of optometry, as well as vision therapists.
Dr. Barry Tannen is the current president and CEO of COVD. His mission is to promote excellence in optometric eye care and rehabilitation through education, board certification, and public awareness. This is complicated by the fact most people don’t know what vision therapy even means or how it can impact our children and workers.
What is COVD Vision Therapy?
According to COVD one in ten American children – more than 5 million – have a vision problem that is significant enough to affect their ability to learn at school. Vision therapy is a process that improves a person’s visual skills and helps them overcome vision problems.
Functional vision refers to a set or planet fitness gainesville skills that can be used to read, catch a ball, and other tasks. These skills include eye movement, eye teaming, and eye focusing.
Functional vision problems can’t be detected by standard vision screenings that usually focus on 20/20 vision. You can have functional vision problems and still have 20/20 vision.
Is it difficult to make people aware of vision therapy?
Similar to our blog “Discovering Vision Therapy”, COVD has tirelessly worked to inform people about vision therapy.
Dr. Tannen points out that there has been a lot of progress in the field over the years thanks to outreach efforts such as public service announcements or the COVD website. He said that vision therapy used to be unknown by 99% of the population. “But it’s now probably closer to 80%. We still have much to do, however.
COVD’s outreach efforts are largely done by members. But, when you break it down, the magnitude of the problem becomes clear. Dr. Tannen estimates that less than 1,000 optometrists offer in-office vision treatment, despite the fact that there are between 40 and 50,000 of them in the country.
This is a professional group of approximately 1,000 people trying to reach a US population that exceeds 300 million via grassroots efforts. Dr. Tannen stated that there are no large drug companies sponsoring ads campaigns or representing us.
Although this may have led to slower acceptance by other medical practitioners, Dr. Tannen believes that the tide is slowly turning. Another reason is that there is more evidence of efficacy available to present to other medical practitioners.
Dr. Tannen stated that there has been a tremendous increase in the number of evidence-based research studies on vision therapy over the past 10-15 years. COVD is currently updating its website in order to make it easier for people to access these studies.
Dr. Tannen also mentioned two other factors that have contributed to increased awareness about vision therapy: rapid acceptance in countries like China and increased awareness about acquired brain injuries, such as concussions and their effect on vision.
