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Alaska Blind Child Discovery

A cooperative, charitable research project to vision screen every preschool Alaskan
 

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Amblyopia is an evolving disease for which a series of age-appropriate public health screening is valid and cost-effective. These screening tests are well-deliverable during scheduled, well-child health screenings described by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) guidelines. Unfortunately, not every child benefits from consistent AAP guideline vision screening due to issues of health insurance coverage, pediatrician availability, experience and compliance, or attendance at public health alternatives to pediatrician’s offices.
In a normal child, vision, and specifically acuity, improves over time as a result of brain learning. Amblyopia is subnormal brain learning of vision during the first decade of life.
ABCD draws an analogy between pediatric vision screening and attempts to catch the elusive, choicest Alaskan salmon in a spawning stream.

Salmon? Salmon enter their original spawning stream bright and fresh from the ocean. They may swim in the main channel, or through smaller tributaries. As they enter the murky river, some swim through areas of clearer water mixing in. As they proceed up-river, some continue to feed and grow, while others gradually waste. In the braided river, large and small salmon may swim, or pool-up in various braided channels so that a concerted effort on only one channel will miss some of them. An observant bear might pluck some of the choicest salmon from the stream. Fisherman have a choice of various methods of fishing, from a tiny, selective dry fly, to a gill-net with specific mesh size and thread color, to the “kill-anything-that-swims” Dupont-spinner dynamite that will catch not only choice salmon, but also any other non-desirable inhabitant of the river. Further up-river, the salmon follow their pre-determined course to various spawning beds in different feeding lakes.

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