SAVA
The Study of Aging and Vision in America (SAVA) focuses on providing up-to-date estimates of the number of older adults in the U.S. with vision impairment and blindness, as well as key insights on the associations between vision impairment and blindness, social determinants of health (e.g., economic stability, healthcare access) and late-life outcomes like dementia, long-term care placement, and mortality. This study employs newly collected vision data from the NIH-funded National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS) to conduct longitudinal analyses that are nationally representative of older adults aged ≥65 in the U.S.
Principal Investigator: Joshua Ehrlich
This work is supported by a grant from the National Eye Institute (R01EY034479).
SAVA Publications
Ehrlich JR. Untreated Vision Loss as a Modifiable Dementia Risk Factor. JAMA Ophthalmol. 2024 Sep 19. doi: 10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2024.3991. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 39298154
Smith JR, Huang AR, Zhou Y, Varadaraj V, Swenor BK, Whitson HE, Reed NS, Deal JA, Ehrlich JR. Vision Impairment and the Population Attributable Fraction of Dementia in Older Adults. JAMA Ophthalmol. 2024. doi: 10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2024.3131
Jin H, Zhou Y, Stagg BC, Ehrlich JR. Association between vision impairment and increased prevalence of falls in older US adults. J Am Geriatr Soc. 2024. doi: 10.1111/jgs.18879.
SAVA Resources
Statistical Code on Open Science Framework (OSF)