Cincinnati / June 5, 2017
The Cincinnati Health Department is one of five partner organizations nationwide to receive a OneSight Focus on Sight grant for vision care services.
“We are proud to be able to expand our healthcare offerings to families in Cincinnati through the OneSight Focus on Sight grant,” says Dr. Marilyn Crumpton, Interim Cincinnati Health Commissioner. “The grant enables our school-based health programs to provide year-round access to vision care and glasses to students in need. The center at the Academy of World Languages (AWL) will join Oyler School in providing vision care services to children and their families.”
Research shows that clear vision empowers students to be twice as effective in school, yet in the United States one in four students, with a problem significant enough to impair their academic performance, often goes undiagnosed. “Having vision services as part of our health center at AWL allows us to intervene early in addressing vision care needs,” Crumpton adds. “We were selected from a pool of candidates based on our history of managing school-based health centers, our sustainability and the need within the communities we serve.”
“There are nearly 7,000 students who attend school in the Evanston, Walnut Hills and East Walnut Hills neighborhoods who lack regular access to medical, dental and vision care. This grant will help us address some of those needs,” states Crumpton. “Currently vision care for all three neighborhoods is provided through the vision center at Oyler School in Lower Price Hill. We are seeing 4,300 students annually for vision care.”
AWL was chosen as the site to have a second vision center because of its centralized location for East side schools. There is a 90 percent poverty rate for area schools. For AWL, more than half of the students are refugees and immigrants from more than 50 countries. The vision services will be part of a larger “health hub” which will model integrated, interprofessional collaborative health care within a school based community learning center.
There are approximately 35,000 students in Cincinnati Public Schools creating the need for expansion to a second vision center. Dr. Crumpton believes there is more than enough capacity to sustain both locations. The Cincinnati Health Department has strong support for its health hub from its partners in healthcare, including: the City of Cincinnati, InterAct for Health, the Community Learning Center Institute, Cincinnati Public Schools, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, Cincinnati Eye Institute, Ohio Optometric Association, The Ohio State College of Optometry and OneSight.