Macular Degeneration Association

The Macular Degeneration Association produces newsletters quarterly. The information provided is for those who have age-related macular degeneration, diabetic eye disease, glaucoma, geographic atrophy, dry eye disease, and cataracts. The newsletter provides educational information, new research, new drug therapies, clinical trials, and treatments. The newsletters go out to 49,200 doctors, patients, families, and caregivers. Brochures were designed and provided to doctors to help their patients navigate macular degeneration and find resources that can help. We have a very robust social media following including 17,225 followers on Facebook, 6,700 on Twitter, 5,000 on Linked In, and 375 on Pinterest.

Macular Degeneration Association has created a state-of-the-art website to provide an extensive number of resources and information to help those affected by macular degeneration and additional diseases that can affect macular degeneration. This website includes educational videos that are produced for patients, family members and caregivers. The website is ADA-compliant and is accessible to people with vision disabilities. There is also a feature for those who speak Spanish to convert English to Spanish. We continue to include up-to-date information on all eye diseases, new treatment options, research information, clinical trials and new drug advances. Our user-friendly website provides the user with friendly navigation, accessibility tools and information for patients, professionals, caregivers and families. This website has an average of 600,000 hits annually.

The Macular Degeneration Association funded research to support research. Age-related macular degeneration is a leading cause of blindness in the United States. Geographic atrophy is the advanced form of dry AMD and affects over 5 million Americans and its incidence increases with increasing age. Despite the chronic nature of geographic atrophy, some patients express visual improvement when treated with pegcetacoplan and avacincaptad pegol. This research project aims to investigate the underlying mechanisms and factors contributing to the reported visual improvements in these patients and to help predict which patients may experience visual improvement.