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Wilmer Eye Institute celebrates World Sight Day

By ALYSSA WOODEN | October 19, 2017

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COURTESY OF JESSI WILSON Wilmer Eye Institute coordinators raised awareness for World Sight Day.

The Wilmer Eye Institute (Wilmer), an eye clinic at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, celebrated World Sight Day last Thursday. Founded by the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB), the day was dedicated to directing attention to blindness and vision impairment.

To celebrate, Wilmer staff talked with patients and families about various research and patient care initiatives at the institute and accepted donations to support resident education. Staff also created print and online materials to market their initiatives.

According to the IAPB, 253 million people are visually impaired, and four out of five cases of blindness are avoidable. IAPB hopes to reduce the number of cases of preventable blindness by raising awareness and disseminating information on World Sight Day.

Jocelyn Davis, assistant director of development at Wilmer, stated that the goals of World Sight Day align closely with Wilmer’s mission to contribute to ophthalmic knowledge and reduce suffering from blindness and vision loss.

“The day offered an opportunity for our team to cultivate and engage with staff and patients at Wilmer’s satellite clinics, an audience that poses logistical challenges because the Development Office is located in East Baltimore,” Davis wrote in an email to The News-Letter.

Wilmer also held an Ask Me Anything (AMA) forum on Reddit, where Wilmer residents answered vision and eye-related questions Reddit users submitted. According to Davis, people from all over the world joined the AMA.

“With questions ranging from the future of eye care to the solar eclipse to how dogs see, it was a great opportunity for the residents to entertain the queries of a curious general public while celebrating and raising awareness for World Sight Day,” Davis wrote.

Davis, who worked on the planning committee for World Sight Day, enjoyed working to bring attention to the event by talking to patients and families at Wilmer’s Frederick clinic.

“As a new member of the Development team at Wilmer, it was great to be a part of such a collaborative effort,” she wrote.

Jillian Beam, assistant director of development at Wilmer, was on the World Sight Day organization committee. She and her team made sure there were marketing materials available at all Wilmer locations to promote World Sight Day and raise awareness about blindness and vision loss.

Beam also helped raise funds by sending emails to supporters, creating a website and advertising throughout Johns Hopkins Medicine. She said that funds raised on World Sight Day were used to support resident research.

“We do a lot of... research into patient care initiatives to make sure that our patients receive state-of-the-art care,” she said.

In addition to World Sight Day, Wilmer is also involved in a number of community outreach and research projects. One program the institute offers is Screening to Prevent Glaucoma (SToP Glaucoma), where community members can come to a clinic for a free glaucoma screening.

Jessi Wilson, communications specialist in the development department at Wilmer, said that glaucoma screenings are especially important, since this disease is does not show symptoms until it becomes serious.

Another program is the Same-Day Appointment initiative, where community members can call Wilmer and go in for an appointment on the same day at one of the institute’s nine locations. According to Wilson, same-day appointments are important because it is necessary to catch certain eye diseases early.

Wilson also discussed Vision for Baltimore, a partnership between a number of community organizations, including Baltimore City Public Schools, the Baltimore City Health Department and Hopkins to provide free eye exams and glasses to Baltimore students in preschool through eighth grade. Wilmer staff also provide replacements for broken or lost glasses.

In 2015, Wilmer conducted the Baltimore Reading and Eye Disease Study to measure the effects of Vision for Baltimore. The study found that the scores for reading skills of second and third grade students who received glasses increased more than those of students who did not receive glasses.

The Center for Nanomedicine at Wilmer is currently bringing together ophthalmologists, engineers and chemists to focus on finding new ways to deliver drugs to patients with eye diseases. Wilson mentioned that people sometimes have difficulty using eye drops due to arthritis or other conditions.

“You need to be very [consistent] with your drops in order to preserve your vision, so they’re looking at ways to deliver drugs to the eye... so that the drops wouldn’t be necessary, or the number of drops would decrease,” she said.


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