Childhood Myopia: A Public Health Emergency and the Path Forward

HOYA Vision Care has declared childhood myopia a public health emergency, citing projections that myopia could affect roughly 52% of the global population by 2050. This framing signals a measurable shift in population eye health that will increasingly affect primary care, school health, and eye-care services.

Epidemiologic trends show a steep rise in myopia prevalence—about 27% in 2010, with projections near 52% by 2050—predicting a substantial increase in childhood cases with lifelong implications. The growing caseload will expand refractive-correction needs and increase the number of children requiring monitoring for progressive myopia and potential pathologic complications, tying directly to service-capacity planning and making prevention and early intervention priorities for pediatric workflows.

The HOYA-led consensus outlines a coordinated strategy: universal pediatric vision screening beginning in preschool, integration of healthy-visual-habit education into school curricula, ongoing professional upskilling for eye-care providers, and alignment with international efforts such as WHO SPECS 2030 to drive systems-level change. These recommendations are presented as scalable measures to improve equitable access, standardize care, and establish sustainable referral and monitoring pathways.

At the practice level, recommendations can be operationalized by defining screening cadences (for example, baseline screening at preschool entry with annual checks through early adolescence—align with local guidelines), setting referral thresholds for accelerated progression, and documenting routine counseling about myopia-control options: orthokeratology, low-dose atropine, multifocal contact lenses, and specialized spectacle lenses.

From an economic and operational perspective, upfront investment in expanded screening and access to myopia-control interventions may be offset by long-term reductions in high myopia, fewer sight-threatening complications, and improved lifetime educational and productivity outcomes. Implementation should include cost modeling, pilot evaluation, and alignment with funding streams to ensure sustainable, equitable rollout. The consensus statement creates an immediate opportunity to pursue pilot funding, public–private partnerships, and policy-level pilots that translate recommendations into funded programs.