Effects of vision care program for elementary school children

The necessity of school health promoting projects is well known to many researchers, however, there is a lack of research on the development of strategies for school health programs and the evaluation of the effectiveness of the programs. The results of our previous study in 1996 identified poor eyesight as one of the several health problems among elementary school children in urban areas. The main objective of this study is to develop, implement, and evaluate vision care for elementary school children. The research method utilized a quasi experimental design using non-equivalent group, pre-post comparison. The sample consisted of all second grade children in two elementary schools in Kyung-giProvince. In order to prevent a contamination effect of the vision care program, one school was selected as a control and the other school was selected as a treatment group. The experimental school had 467 children and the control school had 402 children. The visual acuity of children in both group was measured and a survey questionnaire was sent out to parents on the knowledge, attitude, and behavior related to vision care before the program was implemented. The children of the experimental school received the following programs; separate education on proper nutrition and care of eyesight for children and parents, daily eye exercises using video tape, and an essay and poster contest on healthy eyesight. The eye exercise program lasted from March, 1997 to November, 1997. On November, 1997, visual acuity was measured again from children in both schools. The data was analyzed by using SAS statistical package. The results indicate that the children in the experimental group had significantly (p〈0.001) better eyesight than the children in the control group. Also, some of the behavior highly related to the poor eyesight are poor maternal eyesight and watching TV from a short distance. In conclusion, one of the significance of this project is that the vision care program was developed after the need assessment. It will be encouraged in the future that more school health program should be developed after a need assessment. Also, inclusion of family members was important in health promoting projects within a school setting since healthy behavior needs to be reinforced at horne as well as at school.ope