Healthy Vision 2010 Community Award Grant 2005

The Lions Low Vision Center of Texas, in collaboration with The San Antonio Low Vision Task Force, received a Healthy Vision 2010 Community Award grant to investigate whether educating ophthalmology staff about low vision rehabilitation services would increase referrals of patients with low vision for low vision services. We developed an in-service for ophthalmic staff that included information about ocular disease, identifying patients with low vision and referral sources for those with vision loss. A person with vision impairment participated in the in-service to give discuss how vision impairment affects quality of life.  This is an ongoing project.   

The Lions Low Vision Center, in collaboration with the San Antonio Low Vision Task Force, received a Healthy Vision 2010 Community Award to develop and implement a vision screening that would determine whether an individual that “failed” the screening needed a routine eye exam, an ocular health evaluation or was in need of low vision services.  The purpose of the screening was to determine whether there were individuals in senior apartment Complexes in San Antonio that suffered from vision loss but had not received any low vision services.   We performed 10 screenings and found that almost 2/3 of those screened (62.9%) failed an initial screening either due to visual acuity of 20/50 or worse at distance or near or missed one point on an FDT visual field screening. Over half of those that failed the initial screening (53%) were referred for a routine eye exam indicating simply a need to update their glasses. Almost 5% (4.9%) of those initially screened were found to be vision impaired.