Leah A. Owen, MD, PhD

I am a board-certified ophthalmologist specializing in the medical and surgical treatment of pediatric eye disease and the surgical treatment of adult strabismus. I joined Cincinnati Children’s as Division Director and Chief of Pediatric Ophthalmology.

I earned my Bachelor of Science in Biology and Chemistry from Westminster College and completed MD/PhD training and ophthalmology residency at the University of Utah. My fellowship specialty training in pediatric ophthalmology and adult strabismus was completed at the Storm Eye Institute at the Medical University of South Carolina. After my fellowship, I developed a surgeon-scientist practice at the John Moran Eye Center at the University of Utah, where I was a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences. During this time, I enjoyed having a high-volume referral surgical practice, serving as Vice Surgical Chief of Pediatric Ophthalmology and as Principal Investigator (PI) of a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded laboratory.

I am grateful for the privilege of partnering with families to provide children with improved life-long vision which sets them up for success in whatever they do. Clinically and surgically, I focus on treating complex strabismus, pediatric cataracts, amblyopia vision loss, adult strabismus and double vision and retinopathy of prematurity. The opportunity to combine this care with work to improve our understanding of eye diseases and our ability to treat patients with vision loss makes my job even more rewarding. My goal is to advance how we can treat patients by developing ways to prevent children from developing some types of eye disease altogether.

To accomplish these goals, I partner with experts around the world to find new and better ways for diagnosing, treating and ultimately preventing conditions that result in vision loss and poor eye health. My work is funded by the National Eye Institute and focuses on understanding why certain eye diseases develop at a genetic and genomic (molecular) level. My team utilizes a systems-biology approach that uniquely supports effective translation from bench to bedside, increasing the positive impact on patient care. I accomplish this by collaborating with experts in different areas of medicine and science who form a multi-subspeciality consortium to support a comprehensive analysis of disease mechanisms and opportunities for better treatments or prevention of blinding disease. Using this approach, my team and I have pioneered integrated clinical and genomic analysis utilizing cutting-edge technologies within systemic, ocular and placental tissues. I have more than 50 publications on this work and speak at national and international meetings to share our findings, but I also enjoy learning from my colleagues so that we can design the best approaches focused on the whole patient.

I am privileged by the opportunity to work daily to provide children with the best available treatments to support their strongest vision while also striving to advance our knowledge to discover new and better ways to preserve vision and improve eye health.