Since establishing the “Looking Out for Kids” charity, The Eye Institute (TEI) of Salus at Drexel University has provided vision care services and eyeglasses to thousands of children from the School District of Philadelphia, and in more recent years, our reach has expanded to include the Norristown, Abington, Cheltenham, Jenkintown, Chester, Souderton, Bristol, Upper Darby, Philadelphia Parochial Schools as well as hearing services.
For many years, we have had a strategic alliance with the School District of Philadelphia to provide vision care services to their students. Working closely with school nurses, TEI deploys vision care teams to schools to provide free vision screenings. For children who fail the vision screening, we work with schools nurses to schedule students at one of TEI’s locations for comprehensive vision care and eyeglasses. Each year, several hundred children are transported to TEI for the care they need.
Working collaboratively with The School District of Philadelphia nurses, we provided the following services to children in Philadelphia public schools during the 2023-2024 academic year:
- Vision screenings to 6,895 children
- Comprehensive vision and ocular health examinations to 1,107 children by transporting the children to TEI's pediatric service
- Distributed 2,067 pairs of eyeglasses to public school children
We also provided eye care to the Philadelphia Parochial Schools with 1,464 screened, 50 examined and 78 glasses distributed.
TEI once again collaborated with the Norristown Area School District (NASD) to provide eye care through a school-based vision clinic. TEI’s vision care team provided 205 comprehensive eye exams and 394 pairs of glasses on-site for NASD students.
Our vision care team also provided eye care to children in Cheltenham, Jenkintown, Abington, and Souderton school districts with the University’s Mobile Vision Care Unit. The “Big Red Bus,” as it is affectionately nicknamed, includes all the essential equipment needed to complete a comprehensive vision exam. Using the mobile unit, 263 eye exams were performed and 482 pairs of glasses were dispensed to children in these districts.
The Mobile Vision Care unit also made its way to Delaware County this year, where TEI’s team conducted eye exams for children in the Chester-Upland and Upper Darby School Districts, which resulted in 150 eye exams and 270 glasses dispensed.
Since 2016, Doctor of Audiology students from Osborne Audiology, Salus at Drexel University and audiologists from the Pennsylvania Ear Institute (PEI) have participated in school hearing screenings in the School District of Philadelphia and local communities. During the school year, audiology students and audiologists could be seen carrying their audiometers and screening supplies as they headed out to local schools. Screening stations were set up in libraries, classrooms, and school nurses’ offices to ensure a quiet environment.Dr. Lindsay Bondurant, PEI director and Dr. Jenny Rajan, pediatric audiologist, supervised the students as they performed pediatric hearing screenings. In the 2023-2024 academic year, the teams visited 19 schools and screened 1603 students. Each child had a brief report written about the results of the screening to let the parent know if additional testing was needed, or if they needed to see their pediatrician about a possible medical problem. Of those screened, approximately 345 were referred for additional testing.
Doctor of audiology students not only helped the children, but they also improved their skills while working with the pediatric population. Performing the hearing screenings in a school as opposed to a clinical setting also presented some interesting insights for the students. Concrete walls, open windows, children laughing and talking are all factors that can interfere with children’s ability to hear in the classroom. Students gained a very different perspective on what needs to be done to support children with hearing loss and how important outreach initiatives are for identifying children in need.
Without hearing screenings, recognizing a hearing issue can be challenging for both teachers and parents. Children with hearing difficulties may not realize they have an issue and may be perceived as an unmotivated student or one with poor attention skills.
School hearing screenings are just one of the many ways hearing loss can be identified in a child. Even if the child has struggled with undetected and untreated hearing loss before the PEI team arrives at the school, no issue is to too early or late to address, according to Dr. Bondurant.
Last year, the annual “Looking Out for Kids” benefit raised $140,000 making it possible to continue offering this important program within our community. Through our work and the generosity of our community partners, we can continue to help change the lives of children and provide them with the vision care that is necessary to ensure academic success.