Lay summary
Clear and comfortable vision is essential for learning from early literacy through to higher education. Approximately 20% of children fail school-aged vision screening, primarily due to uncorrected refractive error (need for glasses). This project aims to improve equity to eyecare for children living in high deprivation areas and/or Māori/Pacific communities. This will be achieved by determining the most common vision problems in 12 year-olds in a multi-region population based sample (>750 children) and engaging with whānau, communities, educators and health care providers to develop robust vision screening and eyecare pathways. Evaluation at age 12 will allow development of eye care pathways to enable detection of myopia (short-sightedness) and keratoconus (a progressive corneal condition) at an age that they can be treated to prevent vision threatening complications. School vision screening outcomes will be compared to study results. Follow up and treatment adherence outcomes will be assessed at 12 months.