Concern about childhood vision problems have inspired the Grant City Lions Club to take action. For the last two years our local Lions have performed thousands of child vision screenings throughout northwest Missouri, often going to schools and towns that find it hard to get services because of their size or remote location. In fact, this mission started because our Worth County school was having trouble getting someone to screen its Kindergarteners.
Children in Missouri are blessed by the services of KidSight, one of the organizations supported by Lions Clubs. KidSight provides vision screenings for children from six months through high school. Then they follow-up with parents of the kids who have been referred to an eye doctor. KidSight also tries to provide options for payment assistance with that vision care, including calling upon Missouri’s Lions Clubs to help children in their area. But with limited resources, KidSight staff must focus on the larger population areas where they can do hundreds of screenings in a day.
Mike Hall, a local Lion, became aware of this problem when he asked KidSight to set up a vision screening at the Grant City school and Head Start. They didn’t have the staff to get to Worth County, but he found out they were interested in training Lions to be volunteer screeners, especially in rural areas. And so it started. In 2018 Mike went through the volunteer vetting process and was trained to use a KidSight’s photoscreening device.
The device is a handheld “camera” that can take a “picture” of a child’s eyes from three feet away in just seconds. KidSight vision screenings were “contactless” before that was a thing. The device, really more of a computer than a camera, provides immediate results to the screener on six potential vision problems including nearsightedness, farsightedness, lazy eye, and astigmatism. Generally, 8 – 10% of children screened are referred to an eye doctor for follow-up on previously undetected vision problems.
The Lions Clubs of the 22 counties of northwest Missouri (District 26-M4) have since bought two of these specialized and expensive screening devices for KidSight, stipulating that they be used by volunteer Lions in northwest Missouri. The Grant City Lions have had exclusive use of one of the cameras for the last year.
Additional Grant City Lions have been trained and are active vision screeners. Paul Myers, Bill Calhoon, and Sherri Runde are trained to do the screenings. Marti Myers and Maria Stanley are trained to do the prep and paperwork. These Lions go in pairs and spend from ½ to 6 hours at a screening site plus travel time. Last year our Grant City Lions did vision screenings in 10 counties and performed roughly 20% of the total KidSight screenings statewide that were done by volunteers rather than paid KidSight staff.
Paul Myers thinks about it this way. “Every time we identify a kid with a potential problem, I think that for the price of a gallon or two of gas, we've possibly changed someone's life forever. It feels like a great bargain to me.”
Lions Club International was founded in Chicago in 1917. In 1925 Helen Keller called upon Lions Clubs to champion the cause of services to the blind and visually impaired. Lions Clubs around the world have stood up to address this need in many, many forms ever since. There are now more than 48,000 Lions Clubs worldwide and vision remains one of five global causes supported by Lions along with diabetes, the environment, hunger, and childhood cancer. Anyone wanting to know more or to get involved can contact Mike Hall, Bill Calhoon, or any of our Grant City Lions.
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