World Retinoblastoma Awareness Week: how your practice can help

Around one child a week is diagnosed with retinoblastoma in the UK. It is the most common eye cancer in children. And the people most likely to spot its early signs — before a parent has noticed anything is wrong — are optometrists carrying out routine eye exams. That is you. World Retinoblastoma Awareness Week runs 10–16 May. The Childhood Eye Cancer Trust has everything you need to take part. And it is free.

The Childhood Eye Cancer Trust (CHECT) has called on optical practices across the UK to participate in World Retinoblastoma Awareness Week 2026. The campaign runs 10–16 May, and CHECT has already produced a full resource kit for practices: pre-written social media content, images and graphics, awareness messaging guidance, and printable posters and educational materials. Free signs and symptoms leaflets and posters are available to request directly from CHECT for display in practice. The hashtag is #RbWeek.

You can access and request everything at chect.org.uk/retinoblastoma-week.

Why is this your campaign to own

Retinoblastoma predominantly affects children under the age of six. Around 98% of children in the UK survive it — but survival alone is not the whole story. Early diagnosis is the difference between a child keeping both eyes and losing one. It is the difference between preserving sight and spending a lifetime without it. The earlier the detection, the better the outcome. Not marginally better. Meaningfully, life-alteringly better.

The two most common signs are leukocoria — a white glow or white pupil reflex visible in the eye itself, or in photos taken using flash in low light — and a squint, where the eyes do not track in the same direction. Both can be present in children who appear otherwise completely well, with no other symptoms. Parents often miss them. They do not know what to look for. And the list of professionals who can spot these signs in a structured, clinical setting is short. Optometrists are on it.

A routine paediatric eye examination can reveal a white pupil reflex or an unexplained squint, which may trigger an urgent referral. That referral can change a child's and a family's outcome. You already have the skills and the equipment. What the awareness week provides is a platform to remind your community that bringing children in regularly, before any obvious concern arises, is exactly the right thing to do.

What corporate optical cannot do here?

A multiple chain can put up a poster. It cannot build the relationship that makes a parent trust a local practice with their child's eyes before they have any reason to worry. That trust is built over years of appointments, over familiarity with the practitioner, over the sense that the person looking in their child's eyes actually knows them.

That is an independent practice. That is what you have built.

When a parent sees a CHECT poster in your waiting room and brings their child in, they are not choosing you because you are the nearest option. They are choosing you because they already trust you. And when your optometrist picks up something that requires urgent referral — a white reflex, a squint that doesn't resolve — the outcome of that appointment belongs to your practice, to your community, and to that family. Not to a national brand. Not to a corporation with 600 locations. To you.

This is community optometry at its most important. It is also exactly the kind of clinical story that defines what independent practice is for.

What to do before 10 May — and it won't take long.

CHECT has done the heavy lifting. The resource kit is ready. The social media posts are written. The graphics are produced. You are not being asked to create a campaign from scratch — you are being asked to put your name and your practice behind one that already exists and that exists for genuinely important clinical reasons.

Here is the practical checklist. Do it this week.

Request your free leaflets and posters. Go to chect.org.uk/retinoblastoma-week and request the signs and symptoms materials to display in practice. These are the materials that will sit in your waiting room for the week and catch the eye of a parent who might not otherwise have connected a white glow in a photograph with a clinical concern worth acting on.

Download the social media kit. CHECT provides pre-written posts and images for the week. You do not need to write anything. Schedule the posts now, before 10 May, so the week runs without additional effort.

Brief your whole team: reception, dispensing staff, and every optometrist. Anyone who speaks to a parent of a young child during the awareness week should know what the campaign is about, what the signs are, and what to say if a parent raises a concern. Leukocoria. White pupil reflex. Squint. Urgent referral. Those are the words.

Consider a Crazy Glasses Day or a Wear Blue Day. CHECT runs these as fundraising and awareness activities during the week. Invite staff and patients to participate, make a small donation, and post about it using #RbWeek. It is a visible, human moment that reinforces your practice's role in the community.

The patient relationship that this builds

Parents who bring their children to a practice that actively promotes childhood eye cancer awareness are not one-appointment patients. They are long-term relationships. They come back for their own appointments. They recommend you to other parents. They associate your practice with clinical care that goes beyond selling glasses — care that watches out for their family.

That is the long-term patient base that independent practices build, and the corporate model cannot replicate. Not through marketing. Not through loyalty schemes, but through being the practice in the community that showed up when it mattered.

World Retinoblastoma Awareness Week is 10–16 May 2026. The resources are free. The case for taking part is clear. The window between now and 10 May is short. Use it.

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