A student is successful if, in addition to his efforts, he can focus all his attention during class. Optimal vision is necessary to accomplish the task. This is how Half Helen Foundation understands it, an entity that aims to improve the vision of school-age children, announced the start of activities of its first mobile ophthalmology clinic that will serve pre-kindergarten, primary and secondary students who come from low-income families.
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The Optical Prime mobile clinic will offer free eye care services in addition to custom lenses. It is expected that it will start operating in mid-April next year (2021). “Our goal is that every child has an eye exam and those who are found to have a problem will receive the necessary care. Our mobile clinic will be located on the outskirts of the schools to facilitate access to their services and our team of experts will provide more in-depth examinations to detect any anomaly in the vision of the students, who will be given glasses at no cost ”, comment for The World Newspaper, Chelsea Elliott, Executive Director of the Half Helen organization.
Half Helen Foundation’s Optical Prime partners with local schools that enroll students from low-income families. “We started with schools located in East Austin and gradually we will move to East and Southeast Travis County, until we reach Hays and Bastrop counties. In the short term we hope to serve high school students, ”Elliot says. Currently some of the partner schools are: Austin Achieve, IDEA, KIPP Texas-Austin, Montessori for All, NYOS, and Wayside Schools. However, the foundation hopes to expand its services to other schools and areas of the city starting next fall.
With the mobile clinic, Half Helen Foundation plans to provide thirty to forty eye exams per day. To achieve this, they will have the support of two optometrists and two expert technicians in optometry who will attend to the little ones. “The exams will be performed with advanced and automated technology that will allow us to offer the highest quality in the results of the eye exams; In addition, we will be able to serve more children per day. Patients who require it will be able to ‘navigate’ through an optical screen and select a pair of prescription glasses from more than three hundred high-quality options, “says Elliot.
Although Texas schools do conduct eye exams, they are not enough. “40% of children who show ocular deficiencies on exam are not followed up due to cost and transportation issues. With our clinic we want to close that gap and help the community better understand the importance of early eye exams. There are a large number of children in our county and in Central Texas who have a vision problem and many of them manage to overcome it with just a pair of glasses. It is necessary to understand that many behavioral problems are linked to visual impairment, ”concludes Chelsea Elliott.
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MUST KNOW
Since 2013, the Half Helen Foundation has examined more than fifty thousand children with the goal of detecting vision problems.
THE DATA
More information about the Optical Prime mobile clinic at (737) 615- 4233 visiting him halfhelen.org/optical-prime
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