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MeetTheCuriousEye.com
PW: getcurious

Corporate Name of Client

Kristen Barbarics

Executive Director of Development

The Children's Eye Foundation of AAPOS

655 Beach Street, San Francisco, CA 94109

415-654-4100

The Background:

Color blindness, clinically referred to as Color Vision Deficiency (CVD) affects 1 in 12 males and 1 in 200 females, globally. Largely genetic, CVD makes it difficult to distinguish between colors like reds and greens, and yellows and blues. It can lead to being misdiagnosed with other learning disabilities, withdrawing from activities and games that revolve around color, being bullied, and isolating from peers. According to the National Science Teaching Association, at least one student in a class of 25 is likely to have difficulty distinguishing between colors.

The Challenge:

Most people are diagnosed later in adolescence as the condition typically goes undiagnosed in children. Neither schools nor most physicians’ offices screen for CVD, and children generally don't even know they have it.

The gold standard for diagnosis is the Ishihara test, but children simply aren’t getting to the ophthalmologist to be screened.

“The most common challenge with the Ishihara test in children is availability,” said Dr. Gavin J. Roberts, a partner at the Midwest Eye Institute and Clinical Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology at the Indiana University School of Medicine. “It’s not in widespread use, except in the offices of specialized doctors, and sometimes testing can be limited by a child’s attention span.”

Early diagnosis of CVD is crucial, as color is an important learning and development tool during a child’s formative years.

The Idea:

We challenged ourselves to reimagine what a screening tool could be— using an activity that parents and children do together daily— so parents can have a tool to identify CVD in children as early as possible.

We transformed a screening tool into a story, creating the world’s first children’s book designed to help screen for CVD early in a child’s life.

The Execution:

Each element was executed specifically with these young children in mind.

We wrote in rhymes for young children (first grade reading level), ensuring that we combined entertaining storytelling, interactive exercises, and accurate science.

In collaboration with leading ophthalmologists and award-winning artist, Ruby Wang, we designed our illustrations to mimic the technique, the color, and science of the 38 plates in the Ishihara test – transforming multicolored dots in the shape of numbers into easily identifiable creatures that children can point out.

Each double-page spread includes many creatures— one of which people with red-green CVD (95 percent of CVD instances) will find difficult to detect because they have trouble telling the difference between reds, oranges, and greens. If a child didn’t see a creature, their parent is directed to The Children’s Eye Foundation to find a clinical ophthalmologist for a proper diagnosis.

Over a thousand books were sent out to leading ophthalmologists around the US. And a downloadable version of the book was hosted on TheCuriousEye.org.

The Outcome:

●      The Curious Eye created over 64,000,000 earned PR impressions with audiences around the world.

●      There was a 13,944% increase in interactions across The Children’s Eye Foundation social channels

●      In the week after the book launch, there was a 1,065% increase in visitors to The Children’s Eye Foundation homepage

●      40% of visitors to TheCuriousEye.org downloaded the book

●      Requests for translations of the book came in from eye specialists, parents, and teacher in countries around the world including Spain, Poland, Brazil, South Africa

●      Currently, The Curious Eye is being pitched to publishing companies to get the children’s book to the masses via retail outlets globally

●      Most importantly, testimonials continue to be received from parents and physicians confirming the use of The Curious Eye to help diagnose CVD