Posted July 29, 2010
IF SHE LOOKED close enough, Erin Hughen could see the small white dot in her young son’s right eye. It stood out against the black of Cayden Cox’s small pupil.Erinassumed it was nothing to worry about.
“My mother has a birthmark in her eye, so we just always passed it off as that,” she says. Besides, money was tight.Erinwas a single mother working as a full time office manager in a job that didn’t offer vision care. “It was the last thing on our minds,” she says.
In the fall of 2008, Cayden’s daycare in Moundville was one of several hundred preschools throughoutAlabamato participate in FocusFirst, a special program that provides free high-tech vision screenings to young children in urban and rural communities.Erinwas shocked to learn her two-and a half-year-old son had failed. The screening analysis by Vision Research Corporation revealed that Cayden had potentially significant problems in both eyes and would need to be seen by specialists.
During a free follow-up visit through Sight Savers America in which University of Alabama at Birmingham pediatric ophthalmologist Dr. Thomas Metz volunteers his time,Erinlearned that the little white dot in Cayden’s right eye was a cataract. The cataract caused his vision to become lopsided, creating a condition known as anisometropia.
For young children like Cayden, anisometropia can be a serious concern because it can lead to amblyopia, or impaired vision in one eye also known as “lazy eye.” In Cayden’s case, his left eye developed astigmatism. He was treated with special eye drops and given a pair of corrective eyeglasses donated by volunteer opticians from LensCrafters in Montgomery, Alabama.
Early diagnosis and treatment are vital for young children like Cayden. In many cases, vision problems diagnosed in children as young as two or three can be corrected, while the same problems in children just a few years older cannot because their visual pathways are already formed. Unfortunately, most children aren’t screened until they reach school.
The lack of preschool vision screening is a problem that affects all children, not just children living in poverty, says Stephen Black, president and founder of ImpactAlabama, a nonprofit organization that develops and implements substantive service-learning projects for college students. When children grow up with poor vision, they have a more difficult time learning than children without vision problems because they simply cannot see to learn.
“Not a single state in the country comprehensively screens children for vision problems before they enter elementary school because it’s too expensive to send trained staff to daycares all over the state,” Stephen explains. Thus, finding a solution to that problem became one of ImpactAlabama’s first initiatives, known as FocusFirst.
The mission of FocusFirst is to train college and graduate students to perform vision screenings. Those students then travel to daycares throughout the state and conduct screenings. Using student-volunteers is a win-win situation for the program. Not only does it provide a much needed service for the children, it also exposes the students to the realities of healthcare in poorer communities.
When FocusFirst launched in 2004, more than 4,500 children in 115 sites were screened. Last year the program reached nearly 30,000 children in 1,000 sites. To date, a total of 88,800 children from every county inAlabamahave been screened. Eleven percent – nearly 9,800 preschool children – failed their screening and were referred for follow-up care through Sight Savers America.
“I think it is incredibly gratifying and rewarding,” Stephen says of FocusFirst. But, he credits the program’s success to the Impact Alabama staff, a team of recent college graduates “willing to work full time for an entire year for only about $11,000.” Those graduates have recruited and trained more than 1,900 college students from more than 20 universities and colleges throughout the state to conduct vision screenings.
“That’s really the most remarkable part of the story and the key to replicating the model,”
Stephen says. “It’s the willingness of young people to contribute a huge amount of effort and time for very little money, all in order to make a difference in the ability of preschool children to see, to learn and to soar.”
For more information on ImpactAlabama, please visit www.impactalabama.org.
Regions is a proud supporter of ImpactAlabama.
