Moorfields Eye Charity becomes an affiliate charity of Our Future Health
Our affiliate charities are sharing their expertise in the prevention, early detection and treatment of disease with Our Future Health. By joining forces, the charities are also able to shape the programme to ensure it is fit to serve the research needs of a range of health conditions and diseases.
Moorfields Eye Charity
Moorfields Eye Charity is the UK’s leading charity for funding research into eye conditions and innovations in patient care to improve eye health and the lives of those affected by sight loss.
Through the world-leading partnership of Moorfields and UCL, the charity is bringing new treatments and changing more lives, faster.
The charity recently launched its new grants strategy which focuses on three impact areas – discovery science, translational innovation and clinical and healthcare environment. At its heart is a £50 million commitment of funding designed to transform the outlook for people living with or at risk of eye disease. The strategy includes a new Discovery and Translation Excellence Award which establishes the charity as a national funder of eye health research.
Eye conditions
Right now, more than 2 million people across the country are living with sight loss – a number set to double over the next 30 years.
Sight loss is devastating, and impacts overall quality of life, mental and physical health, as well as health-related behaviours such as physical activity. It also has a huge financial impact for the country, costing the UK economy £25.2 billion a year. In stark contrast to the scale of the impact, only 1.3% of the £2.56 billion spent on health research is specifically invested in eye research.
Sight loss can be caused by a range of eye conditions, but one of the most common is glaucoma. Glaucoma refers to a group of eye conditions in which the optic nerve is permanently damaged where it leaves the eye, and any vision lost cannot be recovered. In the UK, over 1 million people have glaucoma, and 10% of people in the UK who go blind do so because of glaucoma. However, glaucoma can be treated before it causes blindness, so early diagnosis and prevention of damage to the optic nerve is essential.
Macular degeneration is another common eye condition where cells in the middle of the retina die or are damaged, making it difficult to see fine details. Age-related macular degeneration affects over 600,000 people across the UK.
Affiliate charities
Our Future Health is joining with many of the UK’s leading health research charities who are providing valuable support and expertise to help develop Our Future Health. They will make a big impact in allowing us to ultimately change the way we prevent, detect and treat diseases.
Dr Peter Bloomfield, Director of Grants and Research at Moorfields Eye Charity said: “Our Future Health is a world-leading resource for researchers to undertake discovery research on early indicators of disease. We are excited by the opportunity these datasets represent. Currently, more than two million people across the UK are living with sight loss, a number set to double by 2050. Research using genetic and health data on this scale, linking with ophthalmic datasets such as OCT can provide transformational opportunities.
“Our recently launched new grants strategy has a particular focus on major collaborative initiatives. Partnering with Our Future Health will help us to encourage large scale genetic research which can identify people at risk for different ocular conditions and intervene early to prevent sight loss.”
Dr Raghib Ali, CEO and Chief Medical Officer of Our Future Health, said, “It’s important for Our Future Health to represent people across the UK, and this includes people with eye conditions. This is why we’re so pleased to welcome Moorfields Eye Charity as our newest affiliate charity partner, alongside our other leading charity partners in eye health. Moorfields’ expertise in funding research into eye conditions will be vital as we enable research to help people affected by sight loss live longer, healthier lives.”
Learn how Our Future Health will help to improve research into eye health: Why Our Future Health can introduce a new era of sight loss healthcare – Our Future Health
Read more about our partnerships.