Dr. L'erin Garner of Marion, Indiana, designed and coordinates the program.  “We are conscious of the growing concerns regarding children’s vision and are committed to educating children and their caregivers in Indiana’s most poverty stricken counties about the importance of receiving a comprehensive eye exam at an early age.” Garner further believes, “the project will allow us to pilot a one-year program in partnership with four community library systems to use children’s story time as a platform for public awareness regarding the relationship between healthy eyes, corrected refractive error and reading success.”

While the target audience for this year’s grant is high-risk preschool children and their caregivers, the program has been designed to be sustainable into the future and flexible enough to be implemented in any community. The target audience and partner libraries were selected based on two statistics; percentage of children in the county living in poverty and at least one county school with subpar educational performance.

Project implementation began in mid-summer and will run through the end of this year under the direction of Dr. Garner. The “See to Read” project is being funded by a generous grant from Luxottica as part of the 2011 AOA Healthy Eyes Healthy People program.