Under the biennial state budget, the Ohio Department of Health got $10 million for a new eyesight initiative, the Ohio Student Eye Exam (SEE) Program.
OhioSEE will look to get young children who fail their state-mandated biennial vision screenings more care and—if needed—glasses. Around one in four students who need additional care actually get it, according to ODH analysis.
Dr. Shane Foster, the owner of Athens Eye Care and an optometrist, took high marks home from school until sixth grade.
“It turns out, I just couldn’t see the board,” Foster said in an interview Wednesday. “I always think about, my parents had the means, we had good insurance. The kids out there (who) don’t have that, they’re really in much more of a predicament than I was.”
A person’s vision can change quickly and continue changing, particularly when they are in their pre-teen or teenage years, he said. Basic vision screenings might not detect those changes.
“In rural parts of the state ... there are doctors there, we have optometrists in 87 of the 88 counties in Ohio, which is phenomenal, but there are other problems with access to care as well, so it’s not always just financial,” Foster said.
He pointed to other logistics woes in health care deserts, like whether the closest optometrist can take new patients or certain insurance providers.
Dr. Terri Gossard, an American Optometric Association board member and an Ohio optometrist, said urban cores are not immune to barriers of access, either.
“I was shocked as I started to work in a school-based health center down here in Cincinnati, discovering the lack of access that children (who) are in my neighborhood have to actually getting care, so we know that we have to address this from a lot of different avenues,” Gossard said in an interview Wednesday.
In an email, an ODH spokesperson said the department was “working with stakeholders, including eye care professionals, to finalize details of the program.” DeWine’s office asked for $50 million to create OhioSEE originally, but in the final version of the budget, lawmakers earmarked $10 million for the program.
