Free Glasses For LA County Students

Health Care Access

County of Los Angeles

Expand existing project, program, or initiative

While approximately 25% of children naturally need glasses, over 90% of children do not receive vision care in underserved communities. Families face multiple barriers to accessing vision care including, but not limited to: lack of healthcare literacy regarding the importance of vision care; acute shortages of low-cost optometric practitioners; limited or unavailable transportation for specialized vision care; misunderstandings about costs for exams/ glasses; and parents' inability to take time off from work. Vision To Learn's mobile clinics, staffed by licensed optometrists, bring eye exams and glasses to children at schools and community organizations to address these acute access gaps. Programs operate year-round, with vision services provided to kids attending schools during the school year, and at summer camps, libraries, and Boys and Girls Clubs during the summer months.

According to the Campaign for Educational Equity, "Low-income minority youth appear to suffer from disproportionately high prevalence of educationally relevant vision problems and are clearly at high risk for inadequate treatment of vision problems." When students in need step into a VTL mobile vision clinic and receive vision care, therefore, they are beginning a journey that will have a profound impact on their future. Awarded funds from LA2050 Grants Challenge will be used to provide vision screenings, eye exams, and free glasses to students attending underserved schools in LA County including Compton, Inglewood, Lancaster, Long Beach, Pasadena, and LA Unified. VTL will prioritize schools where a majority of students (75%) qualify for free or reduced-price lunch (FRPL). Our diagnostic screening, eye exam, and process for dispensing glasses is as follows: 1. The school nurse or a VTL optician perform vision screenings to identify students with vision difficulties. 2. VTL's mobile clinic comes to the school, where trained technicians and optometrists conduct eye exams for every student who fails their vision screening. 3. Students who need glasses choose a frame from a wide selection; glasses are delivered three weeks later.

VTL uses an evidence-based model of care that addresses a critical health need to solve a common educational barrier. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University's Wilmer Eye Center analyzed the benefits to children after receiving eye exams and glasses. This controlled study published in the JAMA Ophthalmology Journal, represents the most comprehensive study of school-based glasses provision ever conducted (2021). The study's findings quantified the impact of our program: students who received glasses made gains, on average, equivalent to an additional 2-4 months of learning time. Those in the lowest quartile of test-takers, those with IEPs, and enrolled in Special Education classes made gains equivalent to 4-6 months of learning. Evidence shows a pair of glasses improves academic performance and engagement in the classroom which then, in turn, impacts long-term student outcomes (e.g. graduation, college) and overall educational attainment.

VTL uses a custom-built, scalable electronic health record (EHR) and Medicaid billing system called SPARTA (Student Patient and Regional Tracking Application). SPARTA is an integral tool for tracking eye examinations and glasses prescriptions/lab orders by school site/district/region; program data is used to report to our funders for grant reporting, school/ community partners, management, and Medicaid. We record vision screenings, eye exams, glasses dispensed, and vision correction in SPARTA; updates are made in real-time by mobile clinic staff. SPARTA tracks student, clinic, school district, and geographic area results, which means we can report outcomes and an exact number of children served through donor-specific funding awards. We use SPARTA to measure the outcomes and course-correct to ensure goals are met and to support reporting requirements to funders.