Spectacles do look fairly promising, especially if conventional estimates of the benefits factor in income and not the pure health/sight aspect (depends on how much you think GBD disability weights of vision loss transfer over to myopia)
Yeah have thought for some time extremely promising. One of the biggest issue here I think is cheap distribution—NGOs know how to waste money on this front… Even a CE charity which had the aim of demonstrating how to do it on the cheap, and driving down costs could a good shout?
I think you’re right re: cheap distribution. My guess is it would be hard for a new charity to beat VisionSpring, who have been executing on this strategy for a while and have the resources (~300 staff, $15M grant from MacKenzie Scott, etc), the results to show for it (e.g. 1.9 million eyeglasses distributed last year with 535 partners, etc), and “expansion plans” secured (e.g. their new $70M flagship project to screen 8M workers over the next 5-7 years based on the PROSPER RCT). Their 2022 financial summary (page 17) claims to have distributed 1.52 million eyeglasses for $11.9M in total expenses i.e. ~$7.80 per eyeglasses, nearly half opex (mgmt ops, fundraising, program & sales ops) and ~2/3rds of the remainder program delivery costs, although the expenses were inflated by the delivery of ~1.3 mil “covid safety materials” (PPEs etc) so I’d guess the true figure is closer to $5-6 per eyeglasses all-inclusive.
Spectacles do look fairly promising, especially if conventional estimates of the benefits factor in income and not the pure health/sight aspect (depends on how much you think GBD disability weights of vision loss transfer over to myopia)
Yeah have thought for some time extremely promising. One of the biggest issue here I think is cheap distribution—NGOs know how to waste money on this front… Even a CE charity which had the aim of demonstrating how to do it on the cheap, and driving down costs could a good shout?
I think you’re right re: cheap distribution. My guess is it would be hard for a new charity to beat VisionSpring, who have been executing on this strategy for a while and have the resources (~300 staff, $15M grant from MacKenzie Scott, etc), the results to show for it (e.g. 1.9 million eyeglasses distributed last year with 535 partners, etc), and “expansion plans” secured (e.g. their new $70M flagship project to screen 8M workers over the next 5-7 years based on the PROSPER RCT). Their 2022 financial summary (page 17) claims to have distributed 1.52 million eyeglasses for $11.9M in total expenses i.e. ~$7.80 per eyeglasses, nearly half opex (mgmt ops, fundraising, program & sales ops) and ~2/3rds of the remainder program delivery costs, although the expenses were inflated by the delivery of ~1.3 mil “covid safety materials” (PPEs etc) so I’d guess the true figure is closer to $5-6 per eyeglasses all-inclusive.