Glaucoma awareness from a global perspective
To mark World Glaucoma Week, here are some of the many creative approaches being taken to communicate awareness of the disease around the world.
With Glaucoma, timely diagnosis and intervention saves sight, while late diagnosis and treatment barely slow the inevitable progression to blindness. Public awareness campaigns are a crucial and cost-effective way to ensure that the at-risk population is screened.
There are many ways to capture the attention of the target audience, as the examples here illustrate.
Using all-caps to “shout” your message (Image 1) isn’t subtle, but is effective, especially if your target audience already has some vision problems. However, more humorous approaches such as the t-shirt prints in Images 2 and 3 are potentially more memorable – assuming that they get the message across. These contrasting campaigns emanated from the USA. The Japanese contribution (Image 4) adds another twist, incorporating cartoon representations of elderly patients, in contrast to the young faces in Image 1.
Glaucoma fundraising efforts not only raise money, but can raise awareness too (Image 5), while other posters emphasize the international aspect of World Glaucoma Week (Image 6). Image 7, from Italy, revolves around a collaboration with art galleries to raise awareness, contrasting with Image 8’s blunt, no-nonsense approach, developed in Guyana.
Image 9 is an infographic from the US National Eye Institute’s education program, designed to be shared over social media rather than to be viewed in print or poster form. And lastly, images 10 and 11 show two contrasting but nonetheless linked styles from Indian hospitals. The former emphasizes the “free” nature of the glaucoma screening program, while the latter captures attention by linking a free car check-up to something far more important.
The creativity of these and other campaigns will surely go a long way to keeping glaucoma in check. We salute the artists and those who commissioned them.
