Sight for more eyes

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/10/2023 (779 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba’s portable optometrist office is on track to see a record number of students in 2023-24, as demand for pop-up exams and highly discounted glasses surge in public school districts.

The Mobile Vision Care Clinic was established in 2017 to provide children and youth from low-income families with convenient testing during school hours and, if need be, prescription frames and referrals.

“I’d love to make sure that no child in Manitoba doesn’t get eyeglasses or an eye exam because of something that’s beyond their control,” said optician Sean Sylvestre, who founded the clinic, believed to be the first of its kind in Canada.

Equipped with a single eye doctor, the Winnipeg-based operation is visiting upwards of 120 sites — about 30 more than last year — between September 2023 and June 2024. This year also marks the first time staffers are stopping by schools in rural and northern communities.

Sylvestre said it’s a challenge to recruit optometrists to leave their private practices, which is why colleagues in other provinces have struggled to run similar full-time programs and sought his advice.

On a recent school day, he and his colleagues hauled their autorefractor and other state-of-the-art equipment to Fort Rouge School to transform Room 13, a hub for family outreach programs on standard weekdays, into an optometrist’s office.

The clinic completed dozens of K-6 appointments, checking young patients’ abilities to focus, eye muscle development and the like.

Students rotate through various stations (the optometrist can delegate certain tasks to other professionals) so consultations can take, on average, between 10 to 15 minutes.

One Grade 4 student found out he needed glasses after participating in the downtown clinic several years ago. He had a checkup this week.

“I thought the world was supposed to be blurry before I got them,” said Mikey Kinareevski, 9.

Mikey’s mother, Rachel Leo, said her son used to walk into walls “a lot” when he was younger.

“We thought he was just clumsy,” she said, adding Mikey is now so attached to his lenses he sometimes sleeps with them on.

There are countless reasons why families do not schedule formal appointments for students, including the fact many do not realize the province covers the cost of eye exams for children aged 18 and under, Sylvestre said.

The mobile operation bills Manitoba Health for assessments and relies on private donations. It received public dollars to pay for out-of-city travel in response to the province’s request to expand beyond Winnipeg this year.

Fort Rouge principal Stacie Edgar previously worked at Mulvey School — where the pop-up optometrist program began — and at the time, organized outings to the mall to get students’ eyes checked. The participants were selected based solely on teacher observations of squinting students and struggling readers.

It quickly became clear vision challenges were being widely undetected in the population once Edgar’s former boss connected with Sylvestre and they collaborated on a pilot program that is now a staple in the Winnipeg School Division, she said.

“It’s like removing a barrier to learning; that’s how we see it,” said Edgar, who oversees the delivery of education and wrap-around programs at Fort Rouge.

Every patient at the clinic leaves with a slip informing parents of the results.

If a student requires lenses and places a pair of glasses “on hold” at school, adults are asked to authorize a purchase of $120 — a fee subsidized by private donors who support the mobile clinic. The fee is waived when a family cannot afford it.

One elementary school student at Fort Rouge, who greeted the clinic’s staff with red and swollen eyelids this week, was also sent home with a prescription to fix an untreated infection.

For Raine Andrews, staffing the school clinics has proven to be an emotional experience.

“As a kid, I did not recognize my teachers’ faces. I knew my teachers by the sound of their voices. I put on my first pair of glasses and I thought, ‘Trees have individual leaves?’ It was truly a mind-blowing moment,” the optometric assistant recalled

Andrews, now 21, suffered irreversible eye damage because her teen parents could not afford glasses when she was growing up. She got her eyes checked in high school and saved up babysitting money to fill a prescription.

It’s rewarding to know their diagnoses ensure children can participate in sports and pay attention to lessons because they will finally be able to see the world around them, she said.

Teachers have reported improvements in attendance, literacy levels and class participation, as well as decreased behavioural challenges and bullying, in the wake of clinic visits, per the founder.

“We’ve actually had kids cry because they didn’t need glasses,” Sylvestre said.

The optician said his team has been upscaling annually and finding ways “to max ourselves out more” in a bid to keep up with interest.

The clinic’s latest school-year tour will include 15 new stops in the St. James-Assiniboia area alone.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca