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 Home > KidSight Outreach
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Tennessee Lions Charities, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) public benefit foundation organized
for the purpose of collecting and distributing charitable funds for certain charitable
projects of MD-12, such as Operation KidSight.
Approximately 3% of the 1.5 million children in Tennessee have serious eye problems.
The goal of the Tennessee Lions Eye Center and the Tennessee Lions is to prevent
childhood blindness through early detection and treatment of the most common vision
disorders that can lead to blindness.
The Tennessee Lions established a partnership with Vandervilt University Medical
Center to create a free-standing pediatric eye care center. The Tennessee Lions
Eye Center (TLEC) at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital opened in August of 1997 as
a result of funding provided by the Tennessee Lions' $4.1 million pledge. A component
of the pledge was a commitment of volunteerism by the Tennessee Lions in a statewide
pediatric vision screen outreach program administered by a Vanderbilt pediatric
opthamologist and public health director.
The Outreach Program provides free vision screening to help identify young children
with visual problems during the first four years of life. Undetected and untreated
problems during this critical period can prevent proper development of the brain's
binocular function, resulting in amblyopia, or "lazy eye." In fact amblyopia is
the leading cause of monocular blindness in United States' children.
This non-invasive screen method is approximately 85-90% effective in detecting problems
that can cause decreases in vision. Six major eye disorders including near and far
sightedness, astigmatism, anisometropia (unequal refraction), media opacities (.i.e.
cataracts), and strabismus (misaligned eyes) can be detedted by a hand held camera
called an MTI PhotoScreener.
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