When a young Jeffrey Levenson, MD ’84, followed his heart to the UF College of Medicine in 1979, he had no idea pursuing the love of his life, Ilene Levenson, MD ’82, would kick-start a monumental career curing blindness for over 40,000 people worldwide.
he couple had been friends since junior high school, and after growing up together in the suburbs of New York City, they fell in love as college students on a backpacking trip through Europe. After returning to the U.S., Levenson moved across the country from New York to Gainesville to share a life — and medical school — with his other half.
Ilene Levenson, MD ’82, and Jeffrey Levenson, MD ’84
Photo: Photo by Nate Guidry
“Ilene was two years ahead of me in medical school, and she decided to specialize in internal medicine,” Levenson said. “My decision to be an ophthalmologist was in part guided by her decision to become an internist. It’s funny, and it’s ironic, but once she made her decision, my choice of ophthalmology — the thing I now understand as the reason I was put here on Earth — was predicated in part on the idea that somebody needed to be home in time to cook dinner for the kids.”
After attending Princeton University in New Jersey for his undergraduate studies and graduating from the UF College of Medicine, Levenson completed residency training in ophthalmology at Emory University in Atlanta before settling in Jacksonville, Florida. Soon after starting his private practice in downtown Jacksonville, he was confronted by the reality that scores of his fellow residents, blinded by cataracts and uninsured, were unable to afford curative surgery. It led him to found the Gift of Sight program, administered by the nonprofit Vision is Priceless, which has provided free cataract surgery to thousands of blind and medically indigent First Coast patients for over 30 years.
Four decades after Levenson’s College of Medicine graduation, he and his wife returned to UF during the 2024 Alumni Weekend in October to celebrate his induction into the college’s Wall of Fame, an honor recognizing his decades of philanthropic work advocating for and providing free cataract surgery to patients through his home practice in Jacksonville and around the globe as chief medical officer with the nonprofit SEE International.
“There are times in one’s life where you get this idea that you are exactly where you’re supposed to be doing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing. And I get that feeling when I’m doing this work.”
— Jeffrey Levenson, MD ’84
“I was thrilled to be recognized,” he said. “It was a wonderful surprise and reintroduction to medical school at UF and the memories I share from it, and it was another opportunity to share the message of how we might end needless blindness in the world.”
Levenson has been on a mission to cure cataract blindness ever since his own experience with cataracts 15 years ago. At first, reading became more difficult and took longer to complete. Then, headlights from oncoming cars started to be bothersome. He gradually found himself relating to the same complaints shared by his patients during clinic hours. One day, he looked up at his wife across the kitchen table and couldn’t see the details of her face — only a silhouette.
“I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m going blind, I need to have cataract surgery,’” Levenson said. “But it never occurred to me that my life and my career and the things I love might be over. In the weeks after my surgery, as I was celebrating this restoration of sight, it occurred to me that there are people all around the world for whom that’s not the case.”
Motivated by this realization, Levenson made a few calls offering to volunteer his time and skills for cataract surgery. But he quickly discovered that the high-tech surgery he routinely performed for patients and received himself wasn’t feasible in areas with limited resources.
Watch Levenson's TED Talk below
In the U.S., cataract surgery costs about $2,000, and around 4 million people undergo the procedure each year. It’s one of the safest, most successful and most common procedures available. But for the millions of people worldwide who live off less than $5 a day, saving $2,000 is an unfathomable dream.
To make the surgery more accessible, ophthalmologists working in developing countries created a low-tech variant of cataract surgery called manual small-incision cataract surgery. It’s an inexpensive but highly effective variant of the procedure, especially suited to advanced cataracts in low-resource settings, that can be used to cure blindness in just 10 minutes at a material cost of roughly $25.
After learning the procedure from a doctor in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, Levenson has volunteered on two to four medical mission trips around the world each year and helped raise awareness and funds for hundreds more.
“There are times in one’s life where you get this idea that you are exactly where you’re supposed to be doing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing,” Levenson said. “And I get that feeling when I’m doing this work. It fills me up. It makes me feel whole, like I am paying forward the gift that was given to me by the University of Florida, Emory, my parents.
“It’s a gratifying feeling. And then the stories the patients tell bring it home. You can talk about millions of people, you can talk about hundreds of thousands of surgeries, but nothing impacts you like one person’s story about what it’s like to see again.”
