Dr. Andrew Williams' research program aims to improve vision health by understanding and addressing barriers to care. This Healthy Vision Lab brings together epidemiology, big data analysis, and health services research to address important public health issues in ophthalmology, such as follow-up for chronic eye disease and social determinants of vision health.
He is also leading a project to engage directly with patients at high risk of becoming lost to follow-up. Patient navigators are healthcare workers or laypersons who help patients with barriers to care and provide coordination and guidance in the health system. Patient navigators have been used extensively to help patients manage chronic diseases, and they may be a valuable resource for glaucoma patients who miss scheduled appointments. He recently received funding from the American Glaucoma Society to launch a pilot project to assess the feasibility of a patient navigator to contact no-show glaucoma patients. This project will be augmented with expertise from public health faculty and the department’s patient champion, an expert at providing social work resources to our patients. The results of this feasibility study may inform a future randomized trial and cost analysis to assess the impact and sustainability of patient navigation to help glaucoma patients maintain regular follow-up.
The group also has projects underway to assess barriers to vision care in the community and screen for social health determinants. We recently surveyed attendees of a free vision screening event about barriers to eye clinic attendance, and these results will deepen our understanding of the needs in our community. Additionally, we are exploring the feasibility of implementing a screening questionnaire for social determinants of health in the electronic health record. Screening questions would help to identify patients’ needs and to connect them with necessary resources. Furthermore, data collection on social factors could also allow for analysis between social determinants and clinical outcomes of eye disease, as these social factors may play an important, and yet under-examined, role in modeling the clinical disease course.