The role of patient habits and choices in dry eye will be the focus of a new workshop from the Tear Film and Ocular Surface Society (TFOS), the organization announced today. The effort “will focus on what we do to ourselves, as well as what others do to us,” says a TFOS press release.

Topics will include digital eye strain, cosmetics, nutrition, “self-iatrogenesis,” environment, lifestyle challenges, contact lenses, societal challenges and public awareness.

The workshop, entitled “A Lifestyle Epidemic: Ocular Surface Disease,” will be organized by a steering committee that includes dry eye experts from the US, UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Brazil. Committee Chair Jennifer Craig will be joined by Monica Alves, David A. Sullivan, Anat Galor, José Gomes, Lyndon Jones, Maria Markoulli, Fiona Stapleton, Christopher Starr, Amy Gallant Sullivan and James Wolffsohn. 

The steering committee will develop the specific aims, strategy, timeline and other elements of how the workshop will run. An important early goal will be proposing guidelines for determining acceptable levels of evidence and methods of documentation to support it, according to TFOS.

The new workshop will launch once sufficient funds are raised, TFOS says. A brief trailer is available at www.tearfilm.org.