Potentiating Rural Investment in Children's Eyecare (PRICE)

Uncorrected refractive error (URE) is the leading cause of visual impairment among Chinese children, accounting for 90% or more of poor vision, and Chinese children have among the highest rates of myopia in the world. Despite the fact that the problem of URE is safely and inexpensively treated with glasses, only 15-40% of children needing them own and wear glasses sufficient to provide good vision in rural China.

PRICE (Potentiating Rural Investment in Children's Eyecare) will use a randomized, controlled design across 4 groups of all 138 schools in Yunnan (one of China's poorest provinces) and Guangdong (one of the richest) to optimize the model of "free glasses for all with an optional upgrade." The selection of free spectacles and cost of the "upgrade" options will be varied between groups in order to find the optimal balance between high rates of purchase of upgrade glasses on the one hand and good acceptance and wear of free spectacles among those selecting them on the other.

Inclusion criteria

• Randomly selected primary schools, which has all 3, 4 and 5 grades, in the 9 project counties.
• A class randomly selected from each grade of 3, 4, and 5 grades of the selected primary schools.
• All children in the selected classes.

Exclusion criteria

• Those schools that the total number of students are more than 2000.
• Those schools that the total number of students of 3, 4, 5 grades are less than 80.
• Children suffering from eye diseases such as cataract, congenital ptosis, strabismus, congenital glaucoma will not be included in the study and will be recommended referral.