No longer a club for your granddads;
it’s for everyone in your community.
When you hear about the Lions Club, do you think of your granddad, of eyeglass donations or of the mints sold in local restaurants? These ways to support communities might have been true in the past, but today you’ll also find the Lions expanding their mission beyond sight and hearing and teaming up to promote programs that aid in the early detection of health problems.
To the hundreds of thousands of Oregonians who may suffer from vision, hearing, diabetes and blood pressure problems and do not know it, early detection is crucial. 12 years ago Lions Clubs of Oregon, recognizing there was a lack of preventive health care in many areas across the state, made it their mission to find a convenient and inexpensive way to provide health screenings to those in need free of charge.
In 1994, the Oregon Lions Sight and Hearing Foundation (OLSHF) in partnership with Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon began providing free preventive health screenings for visual acuity, hearing, blood pressure, diabetes and glaucoma through the Oregon Lions Mobile Health Screening program. The services of the MHSU program are available to anyone regardless of insurance coverage. To date, the Mobile Health Screening Unit (MHSU) has traveled the entire state and has screened 225,491 children and adults, identifying 101, 750 potentially serious health problems.
Access
The key element to the success and community impact of the MHSU program
is access. Each MHSU - there are two - is a semi-truck set up like
a small clinic. Proudly, the trucks spend more than 300 days of the
year traveling Oregon, conducting student and community screenings
with local Lions Clubs and community volunteers. More than 30,000 youth
and adults are expected to be screened this year alone.
Student screenings account for nearly 70 percent of those served. The
MHSU provides critical early detection of sight and hearing difficulties
that may be impacting a student’s ability to learn. Schools are
mandated to provide vision and hearing screening from kindergarten through
third grade. Budget cuts to educational funding have made it difficult
for schools to set aside funding for these vital screenings. Thanks to
corporate and volunteer support, the OLSHF can provide these at no cost
to the schools.
Trinity Lutheran School is one of the many schools benefiting from the MHSU Program. “The Lions Mobile Health Screening Unit provides an invaluable service,” says James Riedl, Principal of Trinity Lutheran School. “They don’t diagnose, they simply alert the parents and guide them to the appropriate professionals. For us, its thumbs up all the way! The Lions provide an excellent professional image that provides confidence to our parents. Without the Lions, we really wouldn’t have any feasible way to provide these services to families in need. We simply don’t have the budget!”
Vision and hearing screenings are performed in a manner that maximizes the rate of problem detection, while minimizing unnecessary referrals and costs. Families are provided result forms for every child screened. The OLSHF and local Lions work closely with any family that needs financial assistance for eyeglasses and hearing aids, as well as provide access to surgeries to save sight or hearing.
Whereas school screenings check only sight and hearing, volunteers at community screenings test for vision, blood pressure, glaucoma, hearing and diabetes. Community events are directed at adults and seniors who may not have easy access to preventative health care. According to the 2004 Oregon Population Survey, 14 percent of Oregonians are living without health insurance. If an individual were to visit a medical provider for the screening tests provided free of charge by the MHSU program, the cost could exceed $200. Through the Lions MHSU program, and thanks to the support of Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon, along with many Lions volunteers, those without health insurance to cover a basic medical checkup with a doctor are not faced with a $200 financial hurdle they cannot overcome.
“By providing these basic health screenings, we are empowering people to take charge and focus their potentially limited funds towards those conditions that could have a devastating effect on their health and stability,” says Dr. Ralph Prows, Chief Medical Officer of Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon. “The MHSU program addresses that need for early detection of potentially life-threatening illnesses such as diabetes or high blood pressure and possibly treatable problems with vision or hearing.”
Step Inside for Healthier Living:
Your Personal Tour
If you ever come across the colorfully-painted MHSU during your travels
in Oregon, slow down, pull up and step inside for healthier living.
According to Brenda Anderson, Programs Manager at the Lions, “most people can sign up and go through the screening in less than 20 minutes. Nobody is required to have every screening although we prefer that people take advantage of what we are offering.”
When a person does come to the unit they
can
expect to encounter the following:
• First you will be greeted
at the registration table by members of the local Lions Club hosting
the event. You will need to fill out your contact information on page
one of a confidential screening results form and sign the release form
on page three. The release form simply indicates that you understand
that you are going to receive a screening, not a diagnosis. At each
station the volunteer screener will note your individual results on
your form.
• Then you will enter the screening van. The first station is Blood
Pressure. A volunteer will seat you and generally can place the blood
pressure cuff over light clothing. If the clothing is thicker, the sleeve
may have to be pushed up. Once the cuff is in place, the volunteer presses
a button and the automated machine inflates the cuff and provides the
reading.
• Next is the Vision Screening - You will
stand or sit about 10 feet away from a chart. You will be asked to
cover one eye, then the other and read off the lines on
the chart that the volunteer points to.
• Then it’s off to the Glaucoma Screening - It is estimated 3 million Americans suffer from glaucoma. Glaucoma is the 3rd leading cause of legal blindness.The glaucoma screening is slightly more involved, as there are two screening options depending on which screening unit you visit. The first option is called an Air Puff, the other option is known as a Frequency Doubling Perimeter (FDP) Machine. With an Air Puff, the volunteer situates the machine and you simply need to hold still. With the FDP, you will view a screen and press a button when you see “the dot wiggle”.
•The next screening station is the Diabetes Screening – The glucose or diabetes screening is a bit more involved. This screening is only provided if you have not had anything to eat or drink for at least 3 hours (except water or plain coffee). The volunteer will clean your finger and use a lancet to create a small puncture. The blood drop is applied to the diabetes meter. The machine takes about 10 seconds to calculate your blood sugar level. The OLSHF is the only program providing free diabetes testing at community events across the state of Oregon.
•Last but certainly not least is the Hearing Screening. 1 of every 10 people in the USA is affected by hearing loss to some degree. The hearing screening takes a little longer as you sit in a (mostly) sound proof room with headphones. You will listen for the "series of beeps" and press a button when you hear it. The automated system provides the results.
• Once you complete your screenings, you will return to registration. A volunteer will provide you with a copy of your results form and referral information on sight and hearing assistance if needed.
“If I could emphasize two things about our MHSU program, it would
be that we are here to provide a screening, not a medical diagnosis,
and that our services have helped identify more than 100,000 serious
health problems during our 12 years of service,” says Amber Kern,
Executive Director of OLSHF. “Being a Lion means ‘We Serve’.
When I hear that 1 in 8 kids in Oregon is without health insurance or
that the number of Oregonians living with diabetes has risen 30% over
the past decade, I know we are meeting a critical need with our MHSU
program and fulfilling our mission of service
to our community.”
The Oregon Lions Sight & Hearing Foundation provides sight and hearing assistance to more than 100,000 Oregonians in need annually. For nearly 50 years, The OLSHF has contributed to improving the quality of life in Oregon through the Lions Eye Bank; two traveling Mobile Health Screening Units providing preventive health screenings at no charge; a Patient Care Program that provides financial assistance for eye and ear surgeries; operates a children’s statewide low-vision clinic and supports a variety of youth development projects; and maintains a Vision Research Laboratory that has achieved national recognition for developing a revolutionary new technique for corneal transplants.
“Through the MHSU program, our corporate partners and our volunteers we are helping to improve the quality of life of our fellow neighbors in need. Lions are making a critical difference. This is no longer a club for your granddads; it’s for everyone in your community,” says Kern.
The Oregon Lions Sight & Hearing Foundation is the embodiment of Lions motto “We Serve”. The OLSHF is the nonprofit arm of the Lions Clubs of Oregon, which exist to perform community service. Since 1959, OLSHF, a 501(c)(3) charity of the 192 Lions, Lioness, and Auxiliary Lions Clubs of Oregon has been dedicated to improving the quality of life in the areas of sight, hearing, diabetes and humanitarian service for people in Oregon.
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For more information or to schedule the mhsu contact: Oregon Lions Sight & Hearing Foundation 1410 SW Morrison Street, Suite 760 Portland, OR 97205 503-827-6952 or 800-635-4667 www.orlions.org |