Centennial
Since its inception, Salus University and its founding College, the Pennsylvania College of Optometry (PCO), have strived to provide the utmost quality of eye care to the Philadelphia community and beyond. According to studies, 25% of children suffer from vision problems that can negatively impact their school performance and impede social development. The University is proud to serve children in the nearby area who may not have access to annual, comprehensive vision care services.
Not only can you find committed optometrists, optometric interns, and ophthalmic technicians and opticians working at The Eye Institute (TEI) of Salus University and its satellite clinical facilities, you can also find them on the University’s Mobile Vison Van enhancing health in the community at large. With an innate focus on community outreach, the vision care team regularly travels on the 36-foot vision van to local schools to screen students of all ages and provide comprehensive eye exams if necessary.
Introduced in 2001, the original mobile unit was funded through a federal grant for the Vision in Preschoolers (VIP) Study from the National Institutes of Health-National Eye Institute (NIH-NEI). “The project aimed to determine the best ways to screen preschool children for vision disorders and to empower communities by evaluating the best tools for vision screening when used by lay [nonprofessional] screeners,” Dr. Elise Ciner, PCO professor and pediatric optometrist, said.
The VIP study’s predominant focus was on children in Head Start programs, which provide comprehensive early childhood education and other services to low-income families. At the time, five multidisciplinary clinical centers across the country were involved in the study, and more than 4,000 children were screened.
The van's exterior through the years, L-R: 2012, 2014 and 2018
Each of these five clinical centers was given an identical vision van. And, results of this study were used to write over 30 publications which currently contribute greatly to an increased understanding of vision screenings in this specific population.
After the completion of this initial study, the van was used as part of the Philadelphia Prekindergarten Head Start Vision exams. Starting in 2011 and running through 2015, NIH-NEI again provided funding for the van to be part of a second study looking at Hyperopia (farsightedness) in Preschoolers. Funding was received to refurbish the van to continue to increase access to the study for Head Start children living farther away from The Eye Institute’s Oak Lane campus. As a result, in 2014, the van was re-skinned with an updated, more modern look highlighting the multidisciplinary aspect of the University and its services.
The van’s interior houses a full exam room equipped with a slit lamp, phoropter, exam chair, and digital eye chart – it’s essentially an exam room on wheels. Currently, multiple faculty members and PCO students utilize the van including Drs. Ciner, Brandy Scombordi, PCO assistant professor and pediatric optometrist, and Luis Trujillo, PCO assistant professor and pediatric optometrist.
The van's interior through the years, L-R: 2013, 2015 and 2016
During the second half of each school year, the vision van travels twice a week to schools in Philadelphia, Montgomery, Chester and Delaware counties from January to April, and approximately five more times during the remainder of the year. Visiting countless schools, the team is able to screen over 650 children per year in the confines of the van and plan on continually increasing that number for years to come.
