At just US$1.50 per pair, reading glasses can increase personal income up to 33%, but complex policy and regulatory barriers deny access to millions of people.
Oct. 9, 2025 (New York, New York)—Vital Strategies is proud to announce a new partnership with the Livelihood Impact Fund’s Eyeglasses Initiative to address the enormous and under-recognized global burden of presbyopia—a vision impairment that affects nearly all adults over 40. This partnership will support the Eyeglasses Initiative by promoting improvements to the policy environment that will improve access to over-the-counter eyeglasses, starting in Kenya before scaling globally.
“Reading glasses aren’t just for reading; they are a 700+ year old proven tool that boosts productivity and income, helping farmers, factory workers, healthcare workers, educators and over 1.8 billion people perform near-vision tasks better,” said Abi Steinberg at the Livelihood Impact Fund. “They restore independence, extend careers and improve livellivelihoods. Increasing access to reading glasses has been recognized as a high-return investment for global development—scalable, low-cost, high-impact and life-changing. This collaboration with Vital Strategies matches a simple, cost-effective solution with the policy expertise needed to remove barriers to make it happen.”
“Presbyopia is one of the most common—and most easily corrected—forms of vision impairment, yet it limits the productivity and independence of hundreds of millions of people,” said Aaron Schwid, Legal Director for Policy and Programs at Vital Strategies and Lead for Vital Strategies’ Policy Accelerator. “Working with the Livelihood Impact Fund, we’re focused on removing barriers and building policies that enable people to get this simple, transformative tool into their hands. With the right policies in place, we can achieve the WHO’s goal of ensuring millions have the glasses they need to work, learn and thrive by 2030.”
Globally, more than 2.2 billion people live with vision impairment or blindness. Presbyopia, a condition that can often be corrected instantly with basic reading glasses, remains one of the largest unmet needs with over 800 million people still lacking access to reading glasses. The Livelihood Impact Fund’s Eyeglasses Initiative works with local and national governments to integrate reading glasses into community-level services, streamline retail access, and align policies with the WHO’s SPECS 2030 targets, which call for a 40-percentage point increase in effective refractive error coverage by 2030.
Presbyopia results in the gradual loss of the eyes’ ability to focus on nearby objects, making it difficult to read, work or perform daily tasks, affecting 1.8 billion people over the age of 40. Costing just US$1.50 per pair to manufacture, reading glasses have been shown to increase income by up to 33%. Governments have a range of regulatory and policy tools they could use to expand access to presbyopia screening and affordable reading glasses, particularly in communities without eyecare professionals.
This partnership will leverage Vital Strategies’ Policy Accelerator, an approach that helps governments and health leaders translate public health solutions into sustainable, system-wide policies. Deployed in Kenya as the first phase of the initiative, the Policy Accelerator will support governments in adopting regulations that expand access to affordable reading glasses that require no prescription or specialized equipment. Backed by strategic communication, legal expertise and deep local engagement, the Policy Accelerator supports reforms that are sustainable in the long term.
Since its launch in 2021, the Policy Accelerator model has supported more than 70 initiatives across 30 countries and five global regions, helping governments tackle structural challenges such as limited legislative capacity, fragmented coordination and weak institutional support. These efforts encompass a broad range of public health areas—from food policy to air quality to reproductive health.
Since it began in 2023, the Eyeglasses Initiative has launched 50 implementation and research pilots across 16 countries, in collaboration with 27 partners, and has distributed more than 1 million pairs of reading glasses across Africa, Asia and Latin America. Through localized campaigns and trust-building with pharmacists, community health workers and local networks, and by providing training on presbyopia, these programs are working to reframe presbyopia as a livelihood and well-being issue that, when corrected, transform millions of people’s lives.
About Vital Strategies
Vital Strategies is a global health organization that believes every person should be protected by an equitable and effective public health system. We work with governments, communities and organizations around the world to reimagine public health so that health is supported in all the places we live, work and play. The result is millions of people living longer, healthier lives.
To find out more, please visit www.vitalstrategies.org or follow us on LinkedIn.
About Livelihood Impact Fund
The Livelihood Impact Fund seeks to meaningfully and durably improve the lives of the global poor. LIF backs interventions that can deliver five times or more the present value of increased future earnings per dollar spent. Notably, its flagship eyeglasses initiative aims to reach 800 million people with low-cost readers, enhancing productivity, income, and well-being at scale.
To find out more, please visit https://www.livelihoodimpactfund.org/ or follow us on LinkedIn.