Dr. Geoff Tabin selected for New York Times 2020 Holiday Impact Prize

Photo courtesy of Ace Kvale and the Himalayan Cataract Project.

The Byers Eye Institute at Stanford University is proud to congratulate Geoff Tabin, MD, Fairweather Foundation professor of ophthalmology, and co-founder of the Himalayan Cataract Project, which has been selected as a winner of New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof’s 2020 Holiday Impact Prize, supported by Focusing Philanthropy. His column is found here.

Globally, 36 million people suffer from blindness – half from treatable cataracts. Himalayan Cataract Project provides critical eye care services, training for ophthalmic professionals, and enhanced eye care infrastructure where they are needed most. The organization and its global partners have performed more than 1 million sight-restoring surgeries, a life-changing procedure that can be completed in less than 10 minutes with material costs of $25. HCP’s academic home is Stanford, and its home base abroad is the Tilganga Institute of Ophthalmology, a world-class treatment and education center in Kathmandu, Nepal.

“We’re so honored to receive this recognition,” Tabin said. “Over the last few years, we have greatly accelerated our work in Asia and Africa, providing high quality care at low cost, and reaching countries where need is greatest.”

Photo courtesy of Ace Kvale and the Himalayan Cataract Project.

“Dr. Tabin’s and HCP’s global impact on blindness has been remarkable, and the Byers Eye Institute is proud to provide academic collaboration, partnership and support. We share in their thanks to Nick Kristof for his thoughtful and deeply meaningful selections this holiday season.

Tabin joined the Byers faculty three years ago, as he said, “to leverage Stanford’s strengths in medicine, technology and business, and the training opportunities here and abroad, to fulfill this vision of curing needless blindness.” He collaborates with faculty across Stanford’s schools of medicine, engineering and business towards this goal, and directs a premier one-year Global Ophthalmology fellowship program. Fellows spend two-thirds of the year working in Asia or Africa, alongside department faculty in collaboration with the HCP.

The Holiday Impact Prize will help with this work to serve more than 1.6 million people annually through examinations and basic treatment, and sight-restoring surgeries, and facilitate hundreds of training opportunities for eye care personnel.

Since 2009, Kristof has written an annual “holiday gift guide” New York Times column to highlight little-known organizations working to make the world a better place. He began writing the gift guide to bridge a philanthropic gap: readers who wanted to help but didn’t know how, and heroic individuals and organizations who desperately needed resources but were off donors’ radar.

“Dr. Tabin’s and HCP’s global impact on blindness has been remarkable, and the Byers Eye Institute is proud to provide academic collaboration, partnership and support,” said Jeffrey Goldberg, MD, PhD, the Blumenkranz Smead professor and chair of ophthalmology at Stanford. “We share in their thanks to Nick Kristof for his thoughtful and deeply meaningful selections this holiday season.”