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January 13, 2008
American Foundation for the Blind Calls for Accessible Medication Labels
The start of a new year is a great time to evaluate our lifestyles and make better, healthier decisions. The American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) began its own push for a healthier life for people with vision loss with the launch of a public awareness and advocacy campaign, Rx Label Enable. In today's world, medications have become an important aspect of maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Yet, for the nearly 20 million Americans currently experiencing vision loss, the lack of accessible prescription and over-the-counter medication label information poses a serious public health threat due to the potential misidentification and misuse of drugs.
AFB has embarked on the Rx Label Enable campaign to ensure that people with vision loss have ready access to the vital information available to all consumers via medication labeling and related documentation, ensuring that they can take medications safely, effectively, and independently. To achieve this goal, AFB is reaching out to all stakeholders, including consumers experiencing vision loss, policymakers, federal regulators, doctors, the pharmaceutical industry, retailers, assistive technology providers, and public and private insurers to promote solutions, build consensus, and take action. While there are strategies described on AFB Senior Site for enabling people with vision loss to identify medication, these methods do not fully address the problem and, perhaps more importantly, often require the intervention of sighted friends or family members. The hope is that through our campaign, policymakers will address this problem and develop standards to ensure that medication labels and information are accessible to individuals with vision loss.
AFB has been soliciting comments from consumers and their families about personal experiences with inaccessible drug labeling to build a case for a comprehensive, reliable national system for accessible medication information.
Read more about the Rx Label Enable campaign in the Public Policy
Issue Brief: Access to Prescription Drug Labeling
Subscribe to AFB's Rx Label Enable Campaign newsletter
If you, a family member, or friend has had trouble reading prescription or over-the-counter medication information, help us out by completing our short, informal survey, Tell Us Your Story.
Posted by Nancy at January 13, 2008 02:13 PM