ARVO Study Finds 80% of US Counties Have No Glaucoma Specialists

A recent study shows there are geographic disparities in glaucoma care access and socioeconomic differences in areas without practitioners, highlighting the importance of recruiting more practitioners to these underserved areas. Photo: Getty Images. Click image to enlarge. A team of researchers from Rutgers recently assessed the geographic distribution of optometrists and ophthalmologists who consider themselves specialists in glaucoma to identify various socioeconomic factors in these populations that lead to disparities in access to care. The results, recently presented at the annual ARVO meeting in Denver, showed that 80% of US counties surveyed had neither such practitioner; those that did have very few to serve the population in those areas.This cross-sectional study used the websites of the American Optometric Association, American Academy of Ophthalmology and American Glaucoma Society to identify glaucoma-specialist optometrists (OD) and ophthalmologists (MD) in the US as of June 2025. Addresses were geocoded by county, and population demographic and socioeconomic data were collected accordingly. A total of 907 ODs (39.6% female) and 1,146 MDs ( 39% female) were identified in the US. Of all counties, 80.4% had neither MDs nor ODs who specialize in glaucoma, 9.4% had only ODs, 3.9% had only MDs and 6.3% had both. These numbers likely do not reflect the full practitioner population providing glaucoma care, as it relies on self-report by individuals. Counties with neither practitioner type had a lower mean population (36,796) than counties with at least one practitioner (417,070). A significant number of counties that lacked ophthalmologists also lacked optometrists with glaucoma specialization.In counties with either OD or MD glaucoma practitioners, there were 24.9 ODs per million people and 1.77 per million people. For the population 65 years and older, there were 225 MDs per million people and 225.28 ODs per million people.Counties with both ODs and MDs had a significantly higher median household income ($87,093) than all other counties. For instance, in counties with neither practitioner the median household income was $63,056. Similarly, counties with both optometrists and ophthalmologists had a significantly higher mean population than all other counties. Finally, counties with both types of practitioners had a significantly higher proportion of the population with a disability (16.47%) than all other counties.In conclusion, there are widespread geographic differences in glaucoma care access, which, combined with socioeconomic differences in areas without practitioners, compound glaucoma care disparities. These results highlight the importance of recruiting more practitioners to these underserved areas, the authors wrote in their abstract.Original abstract ©2026 Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology.Click here for the source. Liu M, Sarabu N, Choi B, et al. Glaucoma practitioner distribution in United States counties. ARVO 2026 annual meeting.  This article was developed by the editorial staff in conjunction with experts in the field. In the process, AI may have been among the editorial tools used to meet the goals of human editors, who approved all content.