As a highly experienced vision screener who has tested more than 50,000 children over the past 10 years for Florida's VisionQuest, Nancy Jeppesen has seen the real impact on children who have a vision problem, but were not identified. "I believe vision issues among children is a silent epidemic," said Jeppesen, who founded Florida's
VisionQuest in 1994. "These kids don't know they can't see. Most of
them were born that way. When we go into a Title I school that is
typically made up of minority students from high poverty circumstances,
we have seen as much as 43 percent of the school population requiring
eye glasses. And this is at the elementary school level.
"If
these children had a cold or the flu or even a tooth ache, there would
be a public outcry that 43 percent of them need something and they're
not getting it taken care of immediately." Jeppesen
is a mother of five who watched one of her own children struggle in
fifth grade because she had not been correctly identified with a vision
issue after taking the eye chart test in third grade. That experience
led Jeppesen to found a non-profit organization, Florida VisionQuest,
which began working with schools in Florida to provide vision screenings, eye
exams and eye glasses to children. Jeppesen says parents may not
realize the correlation between vision problems and academic success. Read more.
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