Dr Pushkar Silwal.

Dr Pushkar Silwal has been awarded a $30,000 Health Research Council (HRC) grant to investigate how routinely collected data from children’s eye health programmes could help improve kids’ eye health in Aotearoa.

Nowadays, data is everything, said Dr Silwal, research fellow and population health professional with a special interest in eye health, health equity and big data at the School of Optometry and Vision Science, University of Auckland. “Unless you can justify the reason behind investment, it's hard to get public health funding. And data is such a powerful tool that can demonstrate if you do ‘this’, you can get ‘that’ result.”

However, eye health is not as easy to fix as many other health services, he added, mainly because of the public-private split. “Working with Associate Professor Jacqueline Ramke on the Eye Care Situation Analysis Tool report for New Zealand, I found the public sector is less engaged in eye healthcare compared to other countries. New Zealand is also the only high-income country with no public funding for routine eyecare. We have bits and pieces covered – for example, diabetic retinopathy screening for people with diabetes is covered by primary care funding, but it’s not well integrated into the optometric side. Then for children there are some screening programmes, but they are very basic. For adults, we have no public funding for our examinations.”

Lack of data is another challenge, Dr Silwal said. “We don't know the prevalence of diabetic retinopathy. We don't know the prevalence of refractive error. We don't know the prevalence of cataract surgery. Basically, we don't know many things about eye health in New Zealand. Therefore, our first priority with this study will be to map the data to understand what we know and what we don't know and, if there are challenges uncovered, it’ll inform a plan to fix those challenges.”

When mapping the landscape of the routinely collected kids’ eye health data, for example through the B4 School Check and the year 7 school screening programme, the team will assess the availability, accessibility and quality of the data across the country, Dr Silwal said. “We will then work with key stakeholders, including schools and healthcare providers, to identify strategies to enhance data collection, availability and use. This project will complement our team’s ongoing work and will lay the groundwork for a future health delivery research activity that will draw on routinely collected data to inform strategies that improve vision and eye health for children in Aotearoa.”

Co-investigators for the 12-month study are Associate Professors Jacqueline Ramke and Joanna Black and Drs Rebecca Findlay and Justine Zhang.