Unite For Sight Receives Grant from Starbucks
Unite For Sight has been awarded $15,000 from the Starbucks Innovation Fund through the International Youth Foundation’s YouthActionNet® Global Fellowship Program.
With this grant, Unite For Sight will be able to supply, train, and compensate 24 community health workers who will screen patients for eye disease in the Accra region of Ghana. By partnering with local community workers, Unite For Sight will be able to scale-up the impact of its current efforts to eliminate preventable blindness.
To further build its local outreach capacity, Unite For Sight is sponsoring and training local community health workers, who will enable Unite For Sight to reach the poorest, most vulnerable patients who may not respond to larger publicity announcements about eye care services. While Unite For Sight's current outreach teams provide eye care to approximately 150 patients in each community per outreach day, the most vulnerable patients may not attend the monthly eye care services. Many barriers continue to exist, including lack of education and awareness, and fear. It is often believed that when one's hair goes grey, their eyes go grey with cataracts, and nothing can be done to eliminate blindness or restore sight. Community eye workers will eliminate this barrier by providing pre-screenings and awareness.
Unite For Sight is training 24 community members to "Unite For Sight" and provide eye care services in their local community. Each trained community eye health worker is expected to devote 4 hours per day to Unite For Sight activities, providing screening and education for at least 10 people per day, and 300 patients per month. With 24 trained screeners, 7200 patients will be reached monthly, and a total of 86,400 patients will be reached yearly in villages located 1-5 hours from Accra, Ghana. On a monthly basis, the Unite For Sight outreach team of Ghanaian ophthalmic nurses and visiting volunteers will evaluate those in each village who were pre-screened by the community's trained eye health workers. At least 300 pre-screened village members will receive diagnosis and examination by the outreach team's ophthalmic nurses who visit each month.
All community health workers are brought to Crystal Eye Clinic in Accra, Ghana for a training course. Ghanaian ophthalmologist and Unite For Sight partner Dr. James Clarke trains the community eye health workers to:
- Coordinate vision screenings in local communities
- Advise community members about monthly Unite For Sight outreach visits
- Organize transportation for patients requiring surgery and post-operative care
- Teach basic hygiene
- Identify basic eye diseases such as red eye, cataract, pterygium, and foreign body
- Give simple first aid for an emergency eye injury and notify eye clinic immediately
- Keep basic records of activities
- Follow tenets of professionalism and ethical patient care
Community Eye Health Worker Training Model
Objectives of community health workers: Community health workers are apprised of their logistical, administrative, and eye health duties. Logistical tasks include coordinating screening schedules, home visitations, and keeping patients informed of subsequent visits. Health workers will also arrange screening sites for the outreach team before arrival, inform community members of the time and location, and arrange transportation for surgeries and post-operative care. Administrative duties include keeping basic records of which communities were visited, and which patients were seen on what dates. Community health workers must be able to identify eye conditions such as cataracts so that those with eye conditions can be examined and diganosed by the outreach team's ophthalmic nurses. The community health workers also give appropriate basic hygiene education. They also assist during the eye clinic's outreach team visits.
Eye anatomy, physiology, diseases and treatments: Dr. Clarke's training begins by teaching the basic anatomy of the eye, using the camera analogy to illustrate the function of the eye. Health workers then learn to identify common eye diseases including conjunctivitis, cataracts, and pterygium. Dr. Clarke also discusses refractive error, as well as other afflictions that can affect the eye such as diabetes, hypertension, anemia, and sickle cell disease and trauma. Possible treatments for all conditions are explained, though it is emphasized that not all blindness is curable, and only the ophthalmic nurses can recommend or prescribe treatment. After receiving this basic health education, community health workers observe Dr. Clarke perform surgery so that the community eye health workers can inform community members about cataract surgery.
Ethics and professionalism: Before they begin work in their local communities, health workers will learn about best practices in public health and ethical volunteerism.