Development of The Roadmap to Close the Gap for Vision
The Roadmap to Close the Gap for Vision – Full Report, released in 2012, documents the findings from an extensive consultation that aimed to develop feasible, costed and supported policy recommendations to close the gap for vision.
The Roadmap also outlines a sector-endorsed, evidence-based, whole-of-system framework that collectively seeks to address Indigenous eye health equity.
The Roadmap includes 42 recommendations to improve Indigenous eye health over nine domains of specific activity. The Roadmap is presented as a comprehensive package of policy reforms with the goal to ‘Close the Gap for Vision’ by eliminating the known differences in the standard of eye health for Indigenous compared to non-Indigenous Australians. The recommendations are interlocked and need to be adopted as a whole.
Roadmap Recommendations
The nine domains present a broad outline of the Roadmap recommendations.
- Primary Eye Care as Part of Comprehensive Primary Health Care: To improve identification and referral for eye care needs from primary health care
- Indigenous Access to Eye Health Services: To enhance access to Aboriginal and mainstream eye services
- Co-ordination: To improve co-ordination of eye care services and the successful navigation of referral pathways
- Eye Health Workforce: To increase availability and improve distribution of eye health workforce
- Elimination of Trachoma: To eliminate blinding trachoma from Australia
- Monitoring and Evaluation: To capture and report information about progress and improvement of services and outcomes in Indigenous eye health
- Governance: To ensure that there is oversight for the national delivery of ‘Close the Gap for Vision’
- Health Promotion and Awareness: To improve awareness and knowledge of eye health in communities to support self-empowerment
- Health Financing: To ensure adequate funding is allocated to ‘Close the Gap for Vision’.
Where to Find More Information
The Roadmap to Close the Gap for Vision - Full Report describes the full research project with an explanation of the findings and consultation process that led to the recommendations.
A summary report is also available that summarises the research findings and policy recommendations.
These reports can be found on our Roadmap to Close the Gap for Vision page.
