(Milwaukee) – The Medical College of Wisconsin’s (MCW) Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin (AHW) Endowment awarded more than $200,000 over two years to improve vision health for Wisconsin’s children through an integrated system of screening, referral and education across schools and communities.
Prevent Blindness Wisconsin, a not-for-profit volunteer organization dedicated to preventing blindness and preserving sight, is the lead community partner on the award. The organization will work with Deborah Costakos, MD, MS, associate professor of ophthalmology at MCW. The partners will collaborate with a community-wide support network, including Milwaukee Public School (MPS) nurses, Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, Health Navigators and Herslof Optical.
Prevent Blindness Wisconsin provides free, direct sight-saving services throughout Wisconsin. In implementing these services, they prevent blindness by identifying early signs of vision disorders, facilitating early and effective treatment, and preventing eye injury. The project, Healthy Eyes, Healthy Futures, will allow the partners to serve the high-risk children in MPS that have higher rates of undetected, undiagnosed and untreated vision problems because of disparities in access or appropriate referral policies.
In 2014-2015, more than 3,000 MPS children failed their vision screening and were referred to care. Through AHW funding, the partners will develop and conduct vision screenings in multiple settings, including nine MPS schools. They aim to increase awareness of eye health and thus improve children’s vision health access and outcomes in the long-term. Sustainable practices will include new referral patterns to address how vision screening follow-up is conducted and increased education and intervention to help overcome barriers to care. In addition, new systems for recording and sharing data will be developed, and new educational tools and programing will be integrated with existing educational systems. Tools will remain with schools and health navigators for long-term use.
Additional community partners working on this project include social workers, parent coordinators, BadgerCare vision providers, community primary care providers, and HMO advocates.
About the Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment
The Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment works to catalyze health improvement in Wisconsin and was created by funds generated from Blue Cross & Blue Shield United of Wisconsin’s conversion to a for-profit corporation. The Endowment’s Healthier Wisconsin Partnership Program funded the new awards as part of its continued work supporting partnerships between academics and community health and non-profit organizations for urban, rural and statewide health improvement projects in Wisconsin.
Since 2004, the Healthier Wisconsin Partnership Program has invested more than $50 million in 169 community-academic health improvement projects. More information on individual projects is available online: http://www.mcw.edu/Advancing-
About the Medical College of Wisconsin
The Medical College of Wisconsin is the state’s only private medical school and health sciences graduate school. Founded in 1893, it is dedicated to leadership and excellence in education, patient care, research and community engagement. More than 1,200 students are enrolled in MCW’s medical school and graduate school programs in Milwaukee, and 26 medical students are enrolled at MCW-Green Bay. A regional medical education campus is scheduled to open in Central Wisconsin in 2016. MCW’s School of Pharmacy will open in 2017 or 2018 with an initial class size of 60 students. A major national research center, MCW is the largest research institution in the Milwaukee metro area and second largest in Wisconsin. In FY 2013-14, faculty received approximately $154 million in external support for research, teaching, training and related purposes, of which approximately $138 million is for research. This total includes highly competitive research and training awards from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Annually, MCW faculty direct or collaborate on more than 2,000 research studies, including clinical trials. Additionally, more than 1,350 physicians provide care in virtually every specialty of medicine for more than 425,000 patients annually.