The Top 3 Reasons ODs Are Not Doing Myopia Management – Dr. Justin Kwan, CooperVision

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The 20/20 Podcast | Dr. Justin Kwan | Myopia Management

According to Dr. Justin Kwan, Head of Myopia Management at CooperVision, there are potentially 600 myopic children per OD in the USA. This presents a significant opportunity for optometry to serve our younger generation and build our practices—a true win-win. So, why aren’t more ODs practicing myopia management?

In this episode, Dr. Kwan shares eye-opening statistics and his theories on why more of us aren’t diving into myopia management. He also discusses The Myopia Collective, a new initiative. Listen to learn how you can join this group of forward-thinking ODs who are advancing myopia management.

Hear from 7 colleagues about how they have “the myopia conversation” in less than one minute: The Myopia Conversation

Connect with Dr. Kwan: LinkedIn – Dr. Justin Kwan

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The Top 3 Reasons ODs Are Not Doing Myopia Management – Dr. Justin Kwan, CooperVision

Welcome back to another episode. Thank you so much for taking the time to join me. As always, I am so grateful for all the support. As always, I am going to ask one quick favor right off the top. Please if you don’t mind, share this with somebody if you get some value from this. Put a link on LinkedIn, put a screenshot on Instagram, or send a text message to your mom, your friend, or whoever might be interested in this conversation.

I have the one and only Dr. Justin Kwan back on for a second time. Justin is the Head of Myopia Management at CooperVision. He doesn’t like saying the head of. He is the lead. He is the person who’s directing this myopia management ship at CooperVision. He previously was a professor at SCCO for eight years. He doesn’t look like he has been around that long. He’s much younger. He is a proud father of two pre-myopes, which is funny but sad at the same time. It’s amazing to have you back on, Justin. Thanks for coming on.

The 20/20 Podcast | Dr. Justin Kwan | Myopia Management

Thanks. I’m excited for this. It is always something I look forward to. 

I wanted to quickly shape or frame the conversation here. We want to talk about myopia management, but I feel like when I say that, there’s a collective groan from the audience of, “More myopia management.” We want to make this a different type of conversation. It’s not like, “What do you prescribe for this type of patient?” or “How do you integrate?” It’s pivotal changes that are happening in the myopia management landscape.

Embrace the pivotal changes in myopia management to serve your patients best. The landscape is shifting, and so should we.

Changes In Myopia Management Landscape

What is changing? What has changed over the last few months since we spoke? How can ODs reach their potential to serve their patients the best? There’s going to be some great data and information you’re going to share in this conversation. Just because you see myopia management in the title or you hear me say myopia management doesn’t mean it’s the same old conversation. Make sure you stick around for this one. Maybe let’s start with this. Give us a little bit more background on yourself for maybe somebody who doesn’t know you from the last conversation.

A lot of folks ask how I even ended up here at CooperVision. It was my rep texting me even though I had moved away from California. I am in Chicago. I am a minus 10 myself. My wife is also minus 10.

You’re both minus 10. I get the pre-myope thing. 

Being ten years out of school, I am seizing the opportunity to participate in a large-scale way to help our colleagues. We say the profession but it always comes down to people. I thought this would jump at that chance. Even over the past few years being with CooperVision, our team of full-time optometrists has grown to three. Three other ODs report to me. I’m so lucky to have them support our efforts. CooperVision’s commitment is to have the OD be a part of the conversation. A lot of doctors and doctor education.

I didn’t realize that in addition to yourself, there are three other ODs that are full-time at Cooper.

Just for myopia. There are other six full-time ODs for the rest of CooperVision.

This is a little off-topic, and Cooper seems to lead the way here, but that seems like a much bigger presence than there used to be. In the last few years, there have been many more ODs coming into the industry and working with partners in the industry. That’s cool to see because it helps that relationship be built a lot better.

You think, “More people means less work. You can spread it around,” but we’re all super duper busy like you are. That’s a testament to how healthy and thriving the optometric profession is.

That’s a good sign. I’m not that busy. I was away for a week and nothing changed, so it’s all good.

For a good reason though.

Hopefully. Let’s go back to that question I was asking you. I know you want to talk about what’s relevant and what has changed maybe in the last little while.

With that question, for me, I think about smart goals or specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, and timely goals. We’re in summertime. You and I and our families and others have taken family vacations and things like that but always on our mind is the back-to-school period and when kids are in camp and doing other sorts of things. There is a bit more time besides after school to get that comprehensive eye exam done.

I took my daughter, Samantha, who’s almost six years old for her eye exam. I was visiting a colleague who opened Cole. I can’t help but think, “There are still so many children and young children that haven’t gotten their comprehensive eye exam in 1 year, 2 years, or ever.” It always starts with there because we can’t even have the myopia conversation until that family is in our practice. Back to school is already on our minds.

The 20/20 Podcast | Dr. Justin Kwan | Myopia Management
Myopia Management: Every child deserves a comprehensive eye exam. Early detection is key to effective myopia management.

The timing is pretty relevant for back to school. This is a nuance here, but some schools go back sooner. Tell us about what Cooper is doing.

Every summer for the past few years, we have done a direct-to-consumer campaign, which I don’t want to shy away from that it’s millions of dollars of investment. We know those dollars could probably serve better if we do more events and workshops OD to OD, but we have that obligation and responsibility to educate the public in a way that directs them back to you all as the subject matter experts of your community.

We target parents of our age demographic who have children and may have more likelihood of myopia. We send them to MiSight.com. We make sure that you have a fit set, that you’ll be on our doctor locator, and that the parent is searching by ZIP code. The doctors that have gotten started will populate to the top as far as MiSight 1 Day goes, and then hopefully, you’ll get a few new patients through some of our impressions and the way we send to the website.

One thing we’re excited about is highlighting this campaign that’s titled MiSight Today, Anything Tomorrow.  It’s a short fifteen-second clip. We may have been on YouTube and you have clicked through some of those ads at the five-second mark. It’s captivating the audience, these parents, that while their child has this amazing, limitless future ahead of them, we shouldn’t let myopia or nearsightedness hold them back. It is walking through in a very short fashion all the different activities they can do and how excitable and curious they are. Hopefully, we’ve made that emotional connection in our efforts this summer with the consumer to drive the patients back into your offices.

Investing in myopia management today means a limitless future for our children. Let’s not let nearsightedness hold them back.

That’s amazing. The millions of dollars that you spent could probably be spent a little more efficiently in different areas, but that is so important. As optometrists, we could spend some money on doing Google ads, Facebook ads, and YouTube ads, but the reach is going to be for me as an individual much smaller than a corporation that can spend collectively much more money.

It’s a bit more in a sense of grassroots. You’re hitting potential patients of mine that I would not be able to reach otherwise or might not have reached. It’s helpful to increase public awareness and knowledge of the condition of myopia, the idea of myopia management, and the treatment options that are available. They come in asking questions like, “I saw this commercial on this thing.” That helps me in the exam room if the patient’s already primed for that. That’s valuable. This is a campaign that Cooper has done before. This is not a new thing. This is an ongoing thing.

Do you remember back in August of 2020 when we used Sarah Michelle Gellar? In subsequent years, we’ve used different tactics. We can only afford a celebrity for so much.

That’s a fair point. In this whole conversation of myopia, it’s one thing to say, “We have a product. We’re selling the MiSight. Please fit your patient with the MiSight lens.” Cooper is doing a lot more to create a community and create awareness throughout the profession, the industry, and the public. The thing I’ve seen a little bit more pop up is The Myopia Collective. First of all, I like the name The Myopia Collective. That’s very cool. Tell us about where that came from and what exactly it is.

The Myopia Collective Initiative

A couple of months ago, the leadership at AOA, the American Optometric Association, met with a few of us at CooperVision to say, “If AOA is the face of the profession, how do we use the AOA and their talents, resources, and presence to drive more optometrists to practice myopia management consistently as a standard of care and so on?” They were all ears. We stepped up to the visionary level of sponsorship. Sometimes, these things take years to materialize, but this was foot-to-metal or whatever the saying is.

Pedal to the metal.

I got this Myopia Collective done in a matter of months. Anybody can be a member of The Myopia Collective. You can go to MyopiaCollective.org and sign up to be a member. You’ll get quarterly resources and emails. We won’t spam you. It’s once every three months. Part of that initiative is to rally the profession and anybody who has a role or a place to play in a growing child’s life. That could be parents, pediatricians, or whoever. They can be a member as well. That could also be your staff, your technicians, your opticians, and beyond.

We have had an open call for change agents. That’s another fancy name underneath The Myopia Collective. We were able to select change agents in all 50 states and Washington DC to be leaders in their states. They may have a little bit of experience in myopia or a lot, but they are passionate. They may have legislative experience. They may be a pillar in their community and have ideas that they can share with other change agents who will go back to their states and potentially help the members of their states in The Myopia Collective. It’s a way to step up the involvement of optometrists and rally around this very important cause.

That’s great. That change agent position, is that a point person for other ODs in the area to maybe contact?

That is the intent. We’re going to bring the change agents to Chicago in September for a workshop. The AOA is going to lead some sessions. We’ll have a keynote. CooperVision will lead some sessions as well. We’re leveraging the experience of some of the change agents to help the less experienced perhaps but we have a lot of round table discussions on what this could look like and how we could blow this out of the water to have a strong presence back in your home state and your communities again. It’s an in-person experience to kick that off in a more formal fashion.

We all love that. That’s the best way to learn. As much as we like to consume content online, in a case like that where you’re consuming quite a bit, it’s always good to be in person. It’s always the energy. It’s intangible. You can’t measure it. I have a couple of follow-up questions on that. First of all, let’s stick with there’s one for every state in the US. One change agent, that is. If there were other ODs in Washington State who wanted to learn a bit more, how would they connect with that change agent or learn more about The Myopia Collective?

We probably work through the AOA’s relationship with the state associations. In Washington state, it would be OPW. We haven’t figured that out in concrete detail yet. For the change agent workshop, I believe I heard we will be inviting Canadians in. Maybe this could even extend across the border to the different provinces. Maybe there’s a future where there are a couple of change agents in every province as well.

That was going to be my next question. If there is a plan of maybe having change agents within Canada, that’s a great idea. Our population is much smaller, but having a few spread out across the country is great. I like the idea of this liaison between even yourself as an optometrist but within Cooper and then an optometrist who is practicing in that space.

One of the issues I find often, whether it’s dry eye, myopia, or some other specialty, is we’ll have these amazing colleagues come up and speak about how incredible their practices are and what they’ve built but there’s a gap between most people in the audience and that person on stage. A lot of us are standing there like, “What were steps 1, 2, and 3?” Having that in between is helpful.

Nobody got to success overnight. What were the early mistakes that were made? How do we fast-track for our younger or lesser experience in this category?

That’s great. I look forward to hearing more about that in September.

It’s in early September 2024.

I look forward to hearing what comes of that and hopefully hearing a bit more about that across Canada as well. There are changes in the landscape. There are changes in the future of where myopia is heading. There’s information and data that we need to understand to help us understand which way we’re heading. I know you were talking about Richard Edlow who is the Eyeconomist. He has shared some interesting data. I’d love for you to share that, and then if we can extrapolate where that might be, help us understand where we’re heading moving forward.

Potential For Myopia Management In Optometry

I always enjoy Dr. Richard Edlow. He’s humble and hardworking. He digs into the numbers of ophthalmologists and optometrists, at least in the US. I’ve always been quoting 42,000 ODs, but apparently, as of 2024, there are about 49,000 ODs practicing in some way, shape, or form in the US. When you go back to some of my calculations on an ARVO poster, there are about nineteen and a half million children with myopia that are aged 5 to 17. Probably not a lot of the juniors and seniors in high school need myopia control, but if you look at that nineteen million number.

For a moment, we can remove all the retinal specialists and the glaucoma specialists. We can maybe take out some of the ODs at the VA hospitals that won’t see children. The new math is each OD has about 600 kids with myopia to treat. That sounds intimidating when we’re just starting out, but that’s the potential we can build up towards. 600 kids for each of us.

The 20/20 Podcast | Dr. Justin Kwan | Myopia Management
Myopia Management: The potential in myopia management is vast—600 kids per OD. Let’s rise to the occasion and meet the demand.

That’s incredible. The potential is there. There are a couple of ways to look at that. Potentially, that’s intimidating, like, “That’s a lot of kids,” but some other colleagues might be wondering, “Is there much opportunity in this space for me and my practice?” Clearly, that number says there is. 

Another number that we all have been aware of since we pay attention is the number of ophthalmologists is flat. Pediatric ophthalmology is slowly declining, sad to say. We know from a JAMA publication that there are four states, I believe, that don’t even have a single pediatric ophthalmologist. When JAMA looks at optometry as an MD journal, they don’t realize that optometrists, the vast majority of us, do primary eye care and family care that starts as young as ages 3 or 4 years old. We don’t label ourselves pediatric optometrists. There’s still a lot of cross-professional education. That’d be valuable as we interact more with our pediatrician and peds as colleagues.

That’s a very good point that I don’t think we’re often seeing. Optometry generally has a bit of a branding problem across the board. Whether you’re looking at the primary care that we provide, even in that case, we’re seen as spinning the dial and giving a prescription versus the incredible amount of medical knowledge that we have and the services we provide. When we go even more specialized, a lot of people, the public, other MDs, or whoever don’t realize we do all these forms of specialty care. We need to maybe take it upon ourselves a little bit to brand ourselves a bit better. 

Good work to be done.

Let’s talk about different types of numbers, the numbers that have dollar signs in front of them. Those are the types of numbers that may open people’s eyes a little bit and we may see a little more potential. It’s not a bad thing to look at it that way. At the end of the day, most of us who are practicing are practicing within a business. The only way a business can survive, let alone grow, is to make money. From an industry profession perspective, we want to make sure that we are receiving value for the services that we provide. It’s appropriate value commensurate with the education and the training, everything that’s gone behind.

This is something that I harp on all the time. When somebody is not charging enough, it’s not because they’re trying to fleece their patients. It’s because they want to make sure that people are seeing the value in their education and their training. I’m about to go down a slippery slope and start talking about that for about fifteen minutes. I have to step off my soapbox. Let’s talk about revenue though. I know you want to look at revenue a little differently. Let’s talk about how maybe we can improve the revenue that’s gained.

Thankfully, our profession is such an expert in practice management. The conversation has shifted away from revenue per patient more towards revenue per hour. When it comes to what ODs lose a little sleep over, it’s always staff, vision care plan reimbursements, and so on. Revenue should be one of the top things we talk about because inflation was very real in 2022, 2023, and maybe a little bit in 2024 too. How do we not just jack up our prices to keep up with inflation, but how do we even have a larger conversation?

I’m very much about an abundance mindset versus scarcity and complaining. Let’s help ourselves help ourselves. One way to do that with myopia management is to rethink the, “I can have a cost of goods,” conversation, but that’s still box by box or 90 pack by 90 pack. If you think about the whole care team and how many staff you have, whether you’re in 1,000 square feet or 5,000 square feet, the revenue per hour after the cost of goods is about $700 with MiSight, $400 with ortho-k, and $300 with atropine. Remember with atropine, the families are buying the materials, the eye drops, from a pharmacy. With the others, you still get that margin for your materials and your services.

I’ve seen a lot of doctors do an amazing job because once the kids get out of school during the school year, let’s say from 3:00 to 5:00 PM, they have a lot of kids scheduled for follow-up six-month visits and new starts to myopia programs. That’s when their revenue per hour is even higher I would dare say than that $700 per hour that I quoted.

It’s much harder to do two comprehensive eye exams and potentially has one prescription walk for glasses. That gets a little uncomfortable as you watch your daily sales roll through. Even in a sublease situation, a lot of our colleagues have tried to double their revenue per patient by almost requiring a wide-field retinal image. This is a great way to 5X your revenue with myopia management.

Certainly, the revenue is there with a product like MiSight. Going into specialty care in general, you can help to improve your revenue. That scenario where you’re quoting the $700 per hour, what is the schedule looking like in that scenario? Is it all myopia patients or is it that assuming in that one-hour segment, you saw 1 or 2 myopia patients? How would that break down?

It’s taking one patient who agreed to start a program for MiSight 1 Day in this case. Whatever the program fee is, whether you’re $1,500 all in or $1,800, it is breaking that down to how little chair time it takes to do a single vision daily disposable contact lens. That is the treatment they need to use every day. That part you can parse out to the 1-week visit, the 6-month visit, and how much chair time that takes. After you take out the cost of goods, that’s how I land at $700. That’s a converted patient. 

You’re taking that one patient and dividing how much chair time that child is taking over a year.

That’s correct. 

You’re then averaging that out to the hour. That’s good to know. You answered it already. I was going to ask you what the follow-up schedule is like for MiSight. How many follow-ups are there on average in a year? You’re right. Usually, a single-vision lens fitting is pretty straightforward. It doesn’t take that much extra chair time. We’re checking their vision and maybe doing a refraction, I assume, axial length, and things like that. How often are we seeing that child back? 

Follow-Up Schedule For Myopia Patients

If you subscribe to same-day conversion and you’re able to have that impactful conversation, get them for the comprehensive for the one week, which you would’ve done anyway for single-vision contact lenses. The only difference would be that six-month visit. Some practices lean on staff entirely. In some practices, the doctor takes charge of that six-month visit and everything in between. If you think about following up on a single vision daily disposable, it would take the same amount of chair time at the 6-month visit as the 1-week.

That’s a fair point. For the sake of conversation here, I generally will see kids back every three months. It’s flexible. It depends. If I have a 10-year-old who’s a minus 1, I might only do the 6-month visit. If I have a 7-year-old who’s a minus 3, I’ll do it every 3 months. There’s a bit of flexibility in that.

That’s a great point. Three months make sense on the purchase cycle of 90 packs. The evidence for how kids with myopia grow, three months doesn’t give you a whole lot other than getting face-to-face time with the mom, the dad, and the child. For the younger fast progressors in that case example, every 4 months would be good, and then spacing it out to every 6. There is not a lot of clinical utility for three months because some of that change or lack of change could be buried within the noise of how kids grow.

Speaking empirically or anecdotally from my clinical experience, I 100% agree. You know, it often will take six months or so to see the impact of any form of myopia management treatment that we’re implying. The actual value of that three-month is A) The face-to-face and B) Getting some extra data points, especially the axial length. I like to get as many axial length data points as I can to create a bit of a curve as quickly as possible. You’re right. What I tell parents that upfront most often is I don’t expect to see dramatic change in three months. It’s at least six months if not longer, before we start to see the impact of the treatment that we’re applying. That’s a good point. Thank you for sharing that.

With the collective and all these things, you’re talking primarily in those scenarios. Your change agents are people who are already into myopia management, dabbling at least. There are many of our colleagues who are not quite into it as much as maybe you and I would like to see. What the demand is to meet the demand even of these 600 kids per optometrist in the United States. It’s probably not that different in Canada when you do the average out the ratios and all of that. I know you have some reasoning here. If you wouldn’t mind sharing, why do you think we haven’t quite caught on to myopia management? Is it too early that we haven’t heard about it enough? 

Probably not.

Is there something else going on? Why do you think some of our colleagues are hesitant?

We got to look at tons of surveys in the audiences we reach and the hundreds, sometimes thousands of people we’re in front of. Virtually leans itself to the thousands. In 2024, the reason why is maybe somebody only has two patients treated for myopia control, and that’s okay. They’ve started versus what were the barriers back in COVID or 2021 could be a little different.

It seems to be a pretty common theme of like, “I don’t have enough pediatric patients. It takes too much time,” or it’s too expensive. Either it’s too expensive for the practice from the cost of goods or it’s too expensive for the families. Maybe it’s more of the latter because parents have this perception of, “I can buy expensive progressives or multifocal for myself but my kids don’t need something that expensive.” There’s that disconnect that this is a treatment, not something that’s elective. I always joke that more older adults are buying contact lenses for pickleball.

That’s a funny point, but it’s true.

It’s tricky. When I looked at the survey results that came through, it seemed like one-third of the respondents said, “We didn’t have enough pediatric patients.” We dispelled that myth with the census data. With the cost thing being too expensive to the practice, I would counter back with there are five premium daily disposables that are more expensive than MiSight. Those are growing well and quickly in our optometric marketplace. I don’t think it’s the cost of goods.

The cost of the family is probably a very real thing. They’re not used to it. They’re looking for what their insurance covers. If you say $3 a day or $100 a month, that helps a little bit. Flipping it into the value, and you talked about value earlier, this is delivering the treatments or the medication. The side effect is a clear vision, which we needed to give them anyway. Two-in-one value is another way to reframe how expensive it is to the family. It takes practice to have that conversation. I wouldn’t say I’m perfect at it either.

Those are all valid points. Those are the three general barriers or pushbacks that you’ll get from ODs. A) “I don’t think I have enough pediatric patients.” B) “It’s too expensive.”

Overcoming Time Constraints In Myopia Management

For the doctor, the family, or both. The last one is, “I don’t have enough time.”

Time is a tricky one.

That goes back to sometimes, we do workshops where we ask, “If a parent said, ‘I’ve never heard about this before,’ how would you respond?” It’s like, “If they said that, I would have to take time to explain it.” I had this epiphany that a lot of the time, patients come to us and they hear about everything we do for the very first time. It’s back to what you said about optometry having a branding problem. I don’t think that’s unique to myopia specifically. It’s like, “I’ve never heard of computer progressives before for my three monitors. I’ve never heard about hypochlorous acid before as a starting point for my dry eye treatment.” They haven’t heard about a ton of stuff before. That’s a reality.

I don’t want us to think about myopia being a 15 or 5-minute conversation. You can easily get that done with 1 visual for 30 seconds and be confident with your prescribing. Not having enough time, we can help. We’ve created quick start things. We have videos of our colleagues having this conversation in less than a minute. We’d be happy to support you in any way, shape, or form.

That’s helpful. Anything that requires the implementation of the conversation with the parent is where the industry can help. There are programs and training. You know ODs in your area who may be able to share information with you on how they got started or how they overcame certain hurdles. It’s going to take time. It’s not going to take zero time. There are a couple of different ways I look at that. A) If you have a private practice, if you are doing just primary care, I feel like that’s going to become a bit of an issue as time goes on. I don’t think we can only do primary care unless you are in certain pockets of the country maybe.

For me, being around Vancouver, there’s no chance. Primary care is not going to help me. There’s too much other competition, other big players, and other entities. Specialty care is going to be important. I’m going to have to put the time in at some point to either do dry eye, myopia, VT, or something to differentiate myself.

The other thing is that maybe you already have specialized in something. You know it takes time. You’ve done it before. You also know that having the systems in place will help make that more efficient and make it help it move forward. That’s something we’ll have to overcome at some point, the time part, but having the training and having Cooper provide resources is going to help make that more known.

We’re honest with ourselves. It is different for a lot of practices, but different doesn’t have to mean complicated. We can make it simple. That mindset will help us convey to the families, the parents, and the children how rewarding, amazing, and simple it can be and, “This is the best thing for your child.” That’s what starts that emotional connection piece. 

I appreciate that. Do you have any other information? There have been lots of insightful points here that you’ve made that even I haven’t thought about or heard about before. There are certain connections that are going to help me tweak or improve my opioid management practice and hopefully reach my potential and help more kids, for sure. Is there anything else you want to share on that topic that you think might be helpful?

Simplifying Myopia Management Implementation

The simple part is you need somebody to help you. You can’t do it alone. Whether it’s your office manager or one of your technicians, help each other have ten conversations a week. If you see ten adult patients, talk to all ten about myopia management or talk to them about their kids and bring their kids in. If you can start with ten conversations, you’ll eventually start to cultivate or flex that muscle so that it becomes more second nature rather than an intentional cognitive like, “I have to do this.” It becomes more natural. That’s a great starting point to aim for ten conversations a week.

Start with 10 conversations a week about myopia. Cultivate that muscle and make it second nature.

I love that. It’s good. Smart goals. It’s attainable. I like that. It’s measurable. I want to echo that if you don’t mind. I am giving a presentation on myopia management. It’s called The Myopia Startup. It’s very much beginner-level like, “How do I get started in myopia management?” The number one thing I say is to have the conversation. If you’re not talking about it, how is anybody going to know that you offer it? Also, if you’re not talking about it, how are you going to get good at talking about it? It’s practice.

You don’t have to start saying, “We offer this.” It’s more of having a conversation about myopia. You’re right. You don’t even have to do it. If you don’t have kids in your practice, talk to a myopic parent. If you have a minus 10 in your chair, you could be like, “Do you have kids?” or “Do you know that they’re at greater risk of developing myopia if they don’t already?” Having that conversation is huge. 

I can role-play with you quickly because this will help people. If I’m the doctor and you are the parent, I’ll be like, “I have good news and bad news. What do you want to hear first?”

Good news.

I’d be like, “The good news is we can finally treat this nearsightedness thing from getting worse as your daughter grows. The bad news is it’s going to get worse as she grows up.” As children grow, their eyes stretch longer. The core of the issue is that with nearsightedness, the eye is growing too long, too fast, and getting weaker. The great news is we finally have something now that we didn’t have a couple of years back. 

I love that. How long did that take you? Was it 30 seconds to say that?

Yeah.

I mentioned this to you when we recorded last year. There are two statements that I use that I feel seem to connect with parents. Especially if the parent is myopic and wearing glasses or they’ve told me they’re wearing contacts. The first one is, “When we were kids, we didn’t have anything to help us slow this down. Can you imagine if you had something that helped slow down the progression? Do you remember every time you went in and you got a new pair of glasses or a new prescription?”

Imagine if you had something to slow down your nearsightedness when you were a kid. Now, we can offer that to our children.

The second one is when the child is sitting in the chair, “If this was my child, here’s what I would do.” That one is the clutch one that parents want to hear in general. Even before I started doing myopia management, they would ask me about various things like, “What would you do if this was your kid?” I feel like both of those land quite quickly and connect with parents.

It builds that culture of them coming back to you for that family environment and the best care possible.

Where can people find more information about Cooper, MiSight, and all this kind of stuff?

Even for doctors, you can go to MiSight.com and navigate through the top. CooperVision.com is the practitioner page. You can find me on socials. My Instagram is @JustinTime814. I am pretty consistently on LinkedIn. You can find me in many different places. 

Thank you again for coming on and sharing all this amazing information. Big thanks to CooperVision for supporting the show and for providing resources and products for ODs in various practice modalities, specifically in myopia management. Thanks again to Cooper for doing that. Thank you to everybody who’s tuning in to Canada’s number one optometry show. We’ll see you in the next episode.

Thanks.

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About Dr. Justin Kwan

The 20/20 Podcast | Dr. Justin Kwan | Myopia Management Dr. Justin Kwan is a 2009 graduate of Berkeley Optometry and went on to do a contact lens and dry eye residency at SCCO. He taught and saw patients there for eight years before moving to Chicago in 2018, joining a private practice. In April 2020, he transitioned to CooperVision full time to lead myopia management. He has given over 100 hours of continuing education. Dr. Kwan is the current president of the Chicago North Side Optometric Society, past Editor in Chief of Clinical & Refractive Optometry, past chair of the Fellows Doing Research SIG of the Academy, and a member of the Intrepid Eye Society.

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