Philadelphia School District - School Vision Program
For many years, The Eye Institute (TEI) of Salus at Drexel University has provided vision care services to economically disadvantaged children enrolled in Philadelphia's public schools. Each year vision care teams from TEI work collaboratively with public school nurses to assist them in providing state-mandated vision screenings to their children. When a child fails the vision screening, TEI makes arrangements to transport the child to one of TEI's clinical locations to receive a comprehensive vision and eye health examination. Children who need eyeglasses receive two pairs - one for home and one for school. TEI provided vision screenings to over 6,000 children this school year and comprehensive eye care services to several hundred of the children who fail the screenings. The financial resources necessary to support this important community initiative come from the “Looking Out for Kids" charity fundraiser as well as additional support from community foundations.
Working collaboratively with The School District of Philadelphia nurses, we provided the following services to children in Philadelphia public schools to date during the 2023-2024 academic year:
- Vision screenings to 6,243 children
- Comprehensive vision and ocular health examinations to 489 children by transporting the children to TEI's pediatric service
- Distributed 894 pairs of eyeglasses to public school children