Pictured is the inside of a mobile vision clinic for Health Partners of Western Ohio.
Mackenzi Klemann/The Lima News
LIMA — Teams of dental hygienists, dentists and ophthalmologists will visit 500 low-income schools from Toledo to New Carlisle this coming school year, so children don’t miss their teeth cleanings and vision exams.
“We know those are the kids that aren’t seeing a dentist and aren’t getting their eyes examined,” said Janis Sunderhaus, chief executive officer for Health Partners of Western Ohio, which will send 12 dental and six vision outreach teams to schools across the western part of the state.
Sunderhaus met with the outreach teams in Lima on Friday to prepare for a new school year.
The health center started offering mobile vision and dental clinics at schools across the western part of the state in 2005, visiting schools where a high percentage of students are low-income and unlikely to receive consistent dental or vision care.
Health Partners of Western Ohio’s dental outreach teams saw nearly 17,500 student patients through the mobile school clinics last school year alone.
The vision teams saw roughly 6,000 student patients, including 2,000 children who received a pair of glasses.
The clinics focus on what Sunderhaus described as “easy care,” like vision screenings, teeth cleanings, sealants and cavity fillings — things that are easy to treat when caught early, but that can negatively affect a child’s schooling if left untreated.
“We have had kids that have made it through high school flunking vision exams, but never getting glasses,” Sunderhaus said. “Those are the kids that often then fail classes.”
Parents must sign a consent form for Health Partners of Western Ohio to provide dental or vision care to students.
Services are billed to insurance whenever possible, but Sunderhaus said children are not turned away due to lack of insurance.
“You don’t have to take a day off work,” she said. “We’ll do it all right there at the schools.”
