Jump directly to: Content

Learning Objectives for "Keeping Communities Healthy: Your Expanding Role in Disease Prevention"

There is a critical need for increasing the public health role of all health care providers; including optometrists, in the integration of population health and prevention strategies into clinical practice.

Part 1: Epidemiology and Public Health Basics: Expanding the Profession

This course is designed to energize optometric practices and empower providers with the public health tools to better shape the health of their communities.

Learning Objectives:

  1. To better understand a public health focus and to acquire necessary information to help incorporate this population based perspective into practice.
  2. To better understand the history of public health and epidemiology in order to build a firm foundation for growth and practice opportunity.
  3. To understand the important intersection between the clinician and the core functions and analytical tools of public health and epidemiology.

Part 2: Today's Action Steps and Strategies

This course will assists optometrists in taking advantage of new trends in health care and chronic disease, allowing them to better capitalize on emerging opportunities for service and public health expansion that can be integrated into private practice.

Learning Objectives:

  1. To better understand common links to vision and health including important steps that can be taken to achieve greater health impact.
  2. To understand cross cutting strategies in disease prevention including an expanded role in diabetes and smoking cessation.
  3. To better understand the connectivity between providers, Health Agencies, and Non-governmental organizations in developing partnerships to improve and protect community vision health.

Part 3: Planning for the Future

This course tracks the historical milestones that relate to the profession of Optometry and its expanding role in disease prevention, the U.S. Healthcare System and current and future surveillance systems.

Learning Objectives:

  1. To better understand how the U.S. Healthcare system ties to public health, epidemiology and optometry.
  2. To understand the importance of surveillance and economic studies in attempting to reduce the burden of vision loss.
  3. To increase understanding of ways to engage the community, use epidemiology and public health in practice and better respond to the challenge of reducing disease disparities.