Grant: Collaborative Health Research Projects (NSERC partnered)

The purpose of the project is to determine and implement the best strategy for identifying eye problems in pre-school children. Half of the provinces, including Ontario and Quebec, currently have no program for universal vision screening; the other half use diverse tools that may not be the best for efficiently identifying children who need eye treatment before they enter school. About 10% of preschool children need glasses in order to see the blackboard or read comfortably. Without those glasses, they may have learning difficulties or develop behaviour problems. About 5% of preschool children have a problem in one eye that needs to be fixed so that they don't develop a cortical visual problem leading to amblyopia or lazy eye. Later treatment is much less likely to be effective. Our project will compare the efficacy of five screening approaches against the gold standard of a full eye exam by an optometrist. Having determined the best screening tools, we will develop a health economic model for universal preschool screening in the province of Ontario and implement pilot projects in urban and rural school districts. With that knowledge, we will recommend the best approach to be implemented Canada-wide.