Diabetes program funded

Chicago-Prevent Blindness America (PBA) has received a grant from the Allergan Foundation to enable the organization to develop a Spanish language version of its online Diabetic Eye Disease Educator Program.

PBA launched the program for outreach personnel and allied health professionals last year with funding from the foundation. The program is designed to teach participants about the visual system and the signs, symptoms, and complications of the secondary diseases of diabetes, such as diabetic retinopathy and glaucoma. Also, the program seeks to deliver patient education messages about diabetic eye disease through health outreach programs of community health centers, health departments, and civic and faith-based organizations to those populations at highest risk for developing diabetes.

“The Allergan Foundation has been generous partner of PBA for many years, helping us to continue our mission to end preventable vision loss,” said Hugh R. Parry, the organization’s president and chief executive officer. “Thanks to [its] generous support of our diabetes education program, we can help to provide those in communities across the country the tools they need to help protect their eyes from the terrible effects of diabetes.”

For more information about the Diabetes Educator Program, visit www.preventblindness.org/diabetes or call 800/331-2020.