Sean Donahue, MD, PhD, Sam and Darthea Coleman Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, will become president of the American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus (AAPOS) in July.
The AAPOS advances the quality of children’s eye care, supports the training of pediatric ophthalmologists and research activities in pediatric ophthalmology, and advances the care of adults with strabismus, promoting the highest quality medical and surgical care worldwide for all children and for adults with eye misalignment.
Donahue is vice-chair for Clinical Affairs, executive ambulatory medical director for the Ophthalmology Patient Care Center at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and chief of the Pediatric Ophthalmology Service. His appointment was made official at the 49th Annual Meeting of AAPOS held last week in Austin. He has been vice-president since July 2023 and will serve as president until June 30, 2025, hosting the 2025 annual meeting of the organization in Salt Lake City.
“I am thrilled to have this opportunity to lead the organization that has been central to my professional life for the last 30 years,” Donahue said. “Taking care of children at risk for permanent blindness and helping to treat adults with permanent, incapacitating double vision is incredibly rewarding, and I am hopeful that my enthusiasm for this great subspecialty will be apparent to our young members and trainees who are considering pediatric ophthalmology as a subspecialty.”
When he came to Vanderbilt and the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences in 1995, Donahue was instrumental in the creation of the Tennessee Lions Eye Center at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital which opened in October 1997. He helped grow the Pediatric Ophthalmology Service from fewer than 1,000 annual outpatient visits in 1995 to over 25,000 at present.
Donahue earned his MD and PhD in developmental neuroscience from Emory University in 1989. He did his ophthalmology residency at the University of Pittsburgh and fellowships in neuro-ophthalmology and pediatric ophthalmology at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.
His research work has dealt with validation and implementation of automated vision screening instruments that can be used in the primary care setting to detect potential eye problems in children prior to their being able to read a standard eye chart. He has been the lead author on several joint policy statements from AAPOS, the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO), and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) regarding vision screening and the pediatric eye exam in the primary care setting, and was recently the senior author on the AAP-AAO-AAPOS joint statement regarding visual abnormalities and treatment in youth with concussion.
In 2016 he was named a Choosing Wisely Champion by the AAPOS for his work in developing a screening instrument to help reduce the number of children who receive unnecessary eye examinations. The Champion program is a national initiative that recognizes physicians who make significant contributions toward reducing overuse and waste in health care.
Donahue’s work serves as the basis for the AAPOS Choosing Wisely recommendation stating that asymptomatic children do not need reading glasses and that pediatric vision screening should be done in pediatricians’ offices during well-child visits.
In 2017 he received the Bonnie Strickland Champion for Children’s Vision Award from the National Center for Children’s Vision and Eye Health at Prevent Blindness for his efforts to improve children’s vision and for his work in the advancement of vision screening technology.