I could do nothing but worry when my own vision began to blur, and that moment is still engraved in my mind. Because my mother is an ophthalmologist, eye care was familiar to me — but understanding myopia from both sides of the examination table did not make being a patient any less frustrating. I had always wanted to become a doctor; the painful contact lenses and the heavy glasses decided what kind, so that other children would not have to go through what I did.

Eager to change that, I spent hundreds of hours volunteering in the pediatric optometry department of a general hospital in Shanghai. It was huge, yet full every day: teenagers coming alone, children and even kindergarteners with their parents, a line outside every office where patients waited at least two hours. I assisted with registration and queuing, with no time to rest. Children cried; teenagers refused to wear their glasses; parents worried that myopia would affect their child's future.

That turned me from correction toward prevention. Myopia can now be slowed, and sometimes reduced, without surgery and without interrupting an ordinary childhood — and China has evidence behind approaches not yet proven in the United States. Meanwhile, in Florida, I watched more of my classmates put on glasses every year. So I asked leading Chinese ophthalmologists to sit down with us, and with two friends built this site and a YouTube channel to carry what they told us to American families. If one parent finds this early enough, one child will not have to learn what it is like to live behind a blur.