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Show m, , - jig r Dr. Richard W. Sonntag, Pres. of the Utah Society for the Prevention of Blindness, introduces the new Home Eye Test to a group of community com-munity leaders and volunteers at a recent luncheon in Salt Lake City. Looking on is Mrs. Marion Palmer, USPB Preschool Vision Screening chairman, who directs volunteers from the Delta Gamma Sorority Alumnae in conducting free public preschool screening clinics. Home Eye Test Kit Available for Youths A Home Eye Test Kit enabling parents to do a vision screening of their preschoolers at home is now available free of charge from the Utah Society for the Prevention Preven-tion of Blindness, according accor-ding to the Society's president. pre-sident. Dr. Richard W. Sonntag. Simple instructions in-structions prepare the parent to give the child the standard Snellen Symbol E Chart vision test. The situation which the Society seeks to remedy through the Home Eye Test is this: One in every 20 preschool pre-school age children in the U.S. has a vision problem which, if uncorrected, un-corrected, can seriously interfere with his development de-velopment and schooling. school-ing. Present preschool vision screening programs pro-grams "cover less than 500,000 of the 16 million mil-lion children in the age group 3-6," said the National Na-tional Society's Committee Com-mittee on Eye Health of Children, in recommending recom-mending the development develop-ment and nationwide distribution of a home vision test. The Committee, a 12-member 12-member advisory group, is made up of representatives represen-tatives of ophthalmology, ophthalmol-ogy, pediatrics, nursing education, school nursing, nurs-ing, public health administration admin-istration and medical social work. "It must be emphasized," empha-sized," cautions Dr. Sonntag, "that any vision vis-ion screening only indicates in-dicates that a child may have a visual defect; and only limited visual skills are tested. This is true for organized programs with trained screeners and will be true with the Home Eye Test. "Vision testing is not diagnostic, and does not take the place of a professional pro-fessional eye examination. examina-tion. We do not and cannot can-not expect to locate, through screenings every ev-ery child who needs eye care; and some children whose test results indicate indi-cate the need for referral refer-ral to an eye specialist may not need glasses or treatment. "What we hope for is the chance to locate those thousands of children chil-dren who have never had their vision tested, who show no outward, obvious signs of eye or vision abnormality, but will demonstrate quite readily in a screening that they are using only one eye effectively, for example, or that they can "read" the chart with each eye separately separat-ely but not w ith both eyes together." Currently preschool vision screen programs are conducted by public pub-lic health nurses, school nurses, and by the thousands thou-sands of volunteers who are often members of civic, women's , religious relig-ious or fraternal organizations. organi-zations. The screenings are conducted at community com-munity centers, kindergartens, kinder-gartens, day-care centers, cen-ters, nursery schools and Head Start locations. In addition, of course, many pediatricians and family physicians do vision screening as part of the routine physical ' examinations of their preschool -age patients. The Home Eye Test kit includes a scale version ver-sion of the E chart, directions dir-ections for training the child to take the test, for giving the test, and for interpreting the test results. re-sults. A report form, to be returned to the Society, So-ciety, asks the parent whether the child passed the test, and. if not. whether whe-ther an appointment has been made for an eye examination. - and with whom. The Society sees the Home Eye Test as an important means of parent education, and hopefully an inducement to early visual care for their young children. Pilot tests of home vision screenings have been done in which children chil-dren who had been tested at home were subsequently subse-quently given a "regular" "regu-lar" screening by trained train-ed screeners using standardized stan-dardized techniques. Comparison of the results re-sults of the two testing test-ing procedures proved the homo-method results re-sults to be in close agreement with the results re-sults of the traditional method screening. Production and distribution distri-bution of the Home Eye Test was made possible through a grant to the National Society from the Delta Camma Foundation, Foun-dation, a women's organization or-ganization whose prime concern is sight conservation. con-servation. During this introductory period, the Utah Society is handling handl-ing individual requests only. To obtain a Homo Eye Test kit, write to: Prevention Pre-vention of Blindness, 2033 South State St., Salt Lake Citv, lU;ili 81115. |
