Dr. Priya Morjaria, a practicing optometrist and a public health expert begins by explaining what is public heatlh. She defines public health for us as defined by the World Health Organization (WHO). She elaborates on the definition of epidemiology and explains how these work to improve the health of the society.
We discuss what exactly happens in a healthcare system and why not every patient reaches a point of care or treatment after being identified as needing treatment . This may happen due to many reasons like cost of treatment, understanding and implementation of the treatment, etc.
Dr. Morjaria, explains what Universal Health Coverage is and how it works in practice. She explains why UHC is not achieved in many places. This leads to the discussion of the WHO’s World Report on Vision. We learn that there is an extensive need for eye care practitioners at primary, secondary and tertiary levels.
We learn the role of optometrist in such a system where we contribute to very significant aspects of the eye healthcare sector. She explains the need for information that can help us understand how we are performing in providing services. We learn about the things that should be measured to determine our the performance of the system.
She details the barriers to eye care and explains them as follows with an example.
- Coverage
- Adherence
- Effectiveness
We learn about the problems that optometrist face as they lack organized workforce regulation. This impacts the eye care of a region due to unorganized primary eye care providers. She then elaborates on a patient education system that she experimented with to increase the effectiveness of the system leading to no difference in results. She found that there was very little effectivity at one part of the system and hence the rest of the system didn’t lead to any significant increase. Hence the need to practice evidence based care.
Lastly, Dr. Priya Morjaria summarizes her talk and the session ends with a Q&A for the live audience.