- Advocating for optometry’s littlest patients
- Dry eye treatment creates growth potential for optometrists
- Honoring longtime AOA member and dedicated volunteer Heather Tibbetts
- Paraoptometric associates create caring first impressions for eye care
- Honoring an optometry trailblazer: Richard Hopping, O.D.
- She’s going FAR
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- What it takes to work on a comprehensive care team
- Honoring optometry’s best and brightest
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What pediatricians should know about eye health
November 9, 2025
AOA member Chelsey Moore, O.D., shares the messages optometrists should communicate to pediatricians about children’s eye health.
Tag(s): Inside Optometry, Member Spotlight
Excerpted from page 56 of the Fall 2025 edition of AOA Focus.
Vision screening is not enough.
A comprehensive eye exam with an optometrist can detect problems school and pediatrician vision screenings often miss, such as amblyopia, binocular vision dysfunction, color deficiencies and even significant refractive errors. These issues can affect a child’s learning, behavior and long-term visual development if left untreated.
Eye exams assess more than just sight.
A comprehensive eye exam evaluates overall eye health, accommodation ability, eye alignment, depth perception and color vision. Conditions such as strabismus, convergence insufficiency or posterior pole abnormalities may have no obvious symptoms. Some eye conditions are most successfully treated before age 7. After that, certain problems become harder—or impossible—to fully correct.
Vision directly affects learning and behavior.
Research shows that up to 80% of learning in a child’s early years is visual. Undiagnosed vision problems can cause academic struggles and social and behavioral challenges. A complete exam before kindergarten, as is required in Illinois, helps ensure children start school with their best possible visual foundation.
A full exam complements the pediatrician’s care.
Rather than replacing the pediatrician’s vision screening, a comprehensive eye exam enhances overall child wellness, allowing pediatricians to focus on the many other areas of a child’s health care.
Consistency is key to the future.
Consistently reporting visual and ocular health findings on all pediatric eye exams to pediatricians offers an opportunity to be a local resource for pediatric health care providers for when they suspect a visual health problem. Pediatricians will know the doctor offers pediatric care, and they will have confidence they’ll receive follow-up information regarding the outcome of a patient’s exam.