What is Focus First Philly?
Focus First Philly is a college student-run vision screening initiative targeting pre-school aged children in underserved daycares and head starts in West Philadelphia. A team of student volunteers performs free vision screenings with a specialized photo-refractive camera weekly during the semester. This screening detects potential vision problems including near-sightedness, lazy eye, cataracts, and stigmatisms. A third party corporation professionally analyzes the screening results, and identifies the children with potential vision problems. Focus First Philly then coordinates free or subsidized follow-up care for those identified children with our follow-up partners at Wills Eye Institute, where those children receive a full eye exam from an ophthalmologist.
What you have accomplished?
Since our founding at Penn two years ago, Focus First Philly has screened over 1,500 children in West Philadelphia. In addition, we have coordinated free or subsidized follow-up care for over 250 children identified with potential vision problems with our follow-up partners at Wills Eye Institute. Also, we have become involved with Philadelphia's Vision Care Coalition where we have been able to get involved in tackling this vision care problem at a larger scale. Lastly, we have embraced the education component of our service-learning mission by creating a new Academically Based Community Service course, HSOC 330: Community-Based Participatory Research and Health Disparities, that will be offered in the spring 2011 semester and feature one of our co-presidents as the TA.
How to get involved?
Please email FocusFirstPhilly@gmail.com expressing your interest in getting involved with Focus First Philly. You will then be added to our list serve, which will allow you to receive weekly emails about upcoming screenings, where you can sign up at your discretion. No experience or training in necessary to attend the first screening.
Who to contact?
Please email FocusFirstPhilly@gmail.com.
Feel free to contact Rebecca Berger (bergerr@nursing.upenn.edu) if you have any questions.
