About Unite For Sight

Unite For Sight's unwavering commitment to creating real, lasting impact involves four program divisions.

Global Health Delivery

Unite For Sight supports eye clinics worldwide by investing human and financial resources in their social ventures to eliminate patient barriers to eye care. Unite For Sight applies best practices in eye care, public health, volunteerism, and social entrepreneurship to achieve our goal of high quality eye care for all. The programs are locally led and managed by ophthalmologists at Unite For Sight's partner eye clinics. Unite For Sight's international eye care services with partner local eye clinics are comprehensive, including examinations by local eye doctors, diagnosis and care for all treatable conditions, education, and prevention. This full range of services is delivered to the popuation year-round. Outreach services are brought to the people in their villages, in some cases including villages seven or more hours from the clinic. These patients are provided with follow up care by our outreach teams regularly throughout the year. To date, we have provided eye care services to more than 1,000,000 people worldwide, including more than 34,123 sight-restoring surgeries.

Patient Barrier: Patients are usually unaware that their blindness may be curable or preventable (lack of education and awareness)
Our Solution: We bring local eye doctors and quality care to the patients in the villages
Patient Barrier: The nearest eye doctor can be 8-10 hours away
Our Solution: The local eye clinics' outreach teams bring eye doctors and on-site eye care to the patients in the villages
Patient Barrier: Distance and transportation to an eye clinic
Our Solution: If a patient needs surgery, they are transported to the eye clinic for surgery by the local ophthalmologist, and they're then brought back to their home village the next day.
Patient Barrier: Cost
Our Solution: We fund every patient's surgery.
Patient Barrier: Fear of doctors
Our Solution: We engage local community leaders, community members, and previous surgery recipients to educate the community.
Patient Barrier: Eye doctors lack professional development opportunities.
Our Solution: Our visiting volunteer ophthalmologists provide one-on-one mentoring and skills transfer opportunities to local eye doctors. We also sponsor several of the local eye doctors to attend professional development and training opportunities in the U.S.

Global Impact Corps

We scale our overall impact on global health delivery by developing and nurturing the next generation of global health leaders. Our Global Impact Fellows are immersed in effective global health programs. Their extensive pre-departure training accelerates their impact, engagement, and competency when they are abroad. They learn first-hand about best practices in public health, international development, cultural competency, and cross-cultural communication. The Unite For Sight experience develops a Fellow's passion and perspective while enhancing their potential in many career fields across all sectors, including medicine, public health, social entrepreneurship, social sciences, and international development. 99% of alumni say that participating with Unite For Sight impacted their interest in global health, and 97% report that participating in the program enhanced their ideas and interest in supporting local social entrepreneurs in developing countries.

Global Health & Innovation Conference

The Global Health & Innovation Conference annually convenes more than 2,200 participants from all 50 states and more than 55 countries. The conference participants represent a great range of diversity, including students, nurses, doctors, policy-makers, nonprofit directors and volunteers, public health professionals, health educators, community health workers, researchers, social scientists, social workers, social entrepreneurs, philanthropists, teachers, lawyers, and business executives. The goal of the conference is to exchange ideas and best practices across disciplines in order to improve public health and international development. Participants are encouraged to attend presentations in fields that may be outside of their existing expertise so that they can learn about successful strategies in other fields and apply those ideas to their own work.

Global Health University

Unite For Sight's Global Health University is designed to develop and nurture the next generation of global health leaders. Global Health University helps to effect widespread innovative change in global health through comprehensive training workshops and idea incubators, a Global Health Certificate Program, fellowship and internship opportunities in the U.S. and abroad, and online courses.

Health Chapters

Unite For Sight's chapter volunteers are trained to reduce barriers to care by serving as advocates for community members. Chapter volunteers train teachers to identify visual issues among their students, and they also inform teachers about how to coordinate free eye care for any uninsured students. The chapter volunteers similarly train the staff at community centers (i.e. soup kitchens, homeless shelters, free clinics, etc.) about the resources available for their clients to receive free eye care through professional organizations such as the American Academy of Ophthalmology (EyeCare America) and American Optometric Association (VisionUSA). Each chapter eliminates blindness in their community by enabling thousands each year to be connected with free eye care by eye care professionals.