After taking time to reflect on the conversations and commitments emerging from this year’s UN General Assembly (UNGA 80) in September, we’re sharing our takeaways from a week that reaffirmed the importance of investment in community health systems.
Today, policymakers around the globe face shrinking health budgets and an increased need to deliver services to meet the needs of their people, as they collectively face unprecedented shifts in the global health financing landscape.
Evidence shows that community health workers are essential for cost-effective delivery of integrated primary health care services, including eyeglasses, and the attainment of universal health coverage.
Amid this rapidly changing global health financing landscape, EYElliance Co-founder and CEO, Liz Smith, joined leaders and partners at the Community Health Impact Coalition (CHIC) convening, "Smart Investments in Tough Times: Financing CHWs for Maximum Impact", to advance the pro-community-health-worker movement (#ProCHW) and spotlight the role of eyeglasses within primary health care.
Here are our takeaways from the event:
- Investment in CHWs helps governments to stretch resources and deliver services and health commodities within constrained health budgets. As one CHW from Peru emphasized: “Recognizing our work is not an expense. It is an investment. Doing so means closing the gap between the right to health and real access to health.”
- Integrated service delivery–where services such as vision screenings are provided as part of a holistic public health care service package rather than as vertical programs or one-off pilots–is key for achieving impact, sustainability, and scale.
- Uncorrected vision impairment affects 1 billion people worldwide, and EYElliance is working closely with Community Health Services teams at Ministries of Health in in Liberia, Uganda, and Côte d’Ivoire, enabling them to pilot integration of vision screenings, provision of reading glasses, and referrals, into government-led CHW program service packages.
- Results from EYElliance’s work show that basic eye health is not a burdensome add-on for community health workers. In fact, it has elevated their standing in the community, expanding the demographic groups they serve and increasing trust. Notably, a significant percentage of CHWs themselves needed and received reading glasses through these programs, further improving the quality of their work, and helping open the door to broader NCD (non-communicable disease) service engagement.
It was also heartening to see the vast majority of world leaders express support for the UN’s Political Declaration on Non-Communicable Diseases during UNGA. NCDs, including unaddressed poor vision, collectively account for over 43 million deaths annually. Even as the United States and Argentina voiced objections, the Declaration will be discussed by the General Assembly in November 2025, for adoption by vote.
The week at UNGA reinforced one resounding truth for us: we cannot achieve health for all without community health workers.
EYElliance remains committed to supporting governments to make vision screening and glasses a permanent, integrated part of primary health care, turning smart investments into lasting impact.
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