Florida Heiken Children’s Vision Program:Expansion of State-Wide Educational Outreach

Objective. Raise awareness of prevention, early detection, and treatment of vision problems in children. Background. Vision problems in children, if left untreated, can lead to a variety of problems, including permanent loss of vision, learning difficulties and delayed development. Increase awareness of parents, school administrators and community leaders about the importance of comprehensive eye examinations for school children is an important to aspect of reducing visual impairment in children. Methods. The primary activity will be the creation of tri-lingual brochures and educational material about the importance of early intervention and eye examinations for children, targeting parents, school officials and community leaders. The educational material will be distributed to schools, to eye wellness professionals and at other community events. The purpose of these activities will be to generate parental agreement for eye examinations by the Florida Heiken Children’s Vision Program to financially disadvantaged school children attending public schools in all Florida counties. Results. Tri-lingual brochures were created that will be distributed to approximately 5,500 patients. Due to increase awareness, a diverse patient population of children received comprehensive eye examinations for those children that failed the school vision screening. Conclusion. Reducing visual impairment in children and adolescents is a major objective of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Healthy People 2020 health initiative. This project helped raise awareness of prevention, early detection, and treatment of vision problems in children. Grant. This project was funded by the American Optometric Association Healthy Eyes Healthy People/ Florida Optometric Association Grant.