By Rohan Anne, Webmaster

The Vision Awareness Initiative (VAI)  is a new club at Conestoga this year that aims to teach people about several ocular diseases and provide opportunities for medical research around vision health. From researching detrimental eye problems to raising awareness through campaigns, the VAI hopes to bring knowledge about vision health to the community.

The main goal of the VAI is to create and promote several awareness campaigns around ocular disorders such as dry eye, myopia, macular degeneration and glaucoma. The VAI will also bring in guest speakers from Wills Eye Hospital, a leading optical health center, throughout club meetings. These guest speakers will provide expert information in ophthalmology, the branch of medicine regarding vision health, so students can learn more about the medical field.

According to junior and president of the VAI, Faizaan Siddique, these ocular disorders are not known amongst most people. The VAI aims to change that.

“Usually, people don’t realize how prevalent some of these diseases are. Some (diseases) such as myopia are somewhat harmless at first, but can have detrimental effects later on in someone’s lifetime,” Siddique said. “As technology becomes increasingly powerful in our lives, it becomes important to spread the word about them and keep track of our vision.”

In addition to promoting awareness around diseases and bringing in guest speakers, the VAI also plans to conduct research on several topics within the field of ophthalmology through its Youth Research Program. The Youth Research Program aims to provide students with several research projects around ocular diseases and publish high quality medical research. Siddique also plans to use the Youth Research Program to teach students how to conduct quality research.

“Research is a learning curve, and you’re not supposed to get it on the first shot,” Siddique said. “It takes time, energy and effort to master, and we plan on providing a platform for students to conduct research, get feedback for each part of the research process and publish high quality work.”

Beyond this year, the VAI wants to start teaming up with Conestoga and other schools to promote healthy habits regarding vision, such as taking technology breaks frequently throughout the school day to reduce eye fatigue. The VAI also wants to expand its awareness campaigns to other local schools, local communities and state government agencies.

According to Jacqueline Gontarek, AP Biology teacher and the adviser of the VAI, this club is important because it provides information about an important bodily sense that most people do not know much about.

“We’ve had health clubs for other types of awareness, medical conditions and psychological issues. We spend so much time in front of a screen, and it has a big impact on our health,” Gontarek said. “Vision health is an untapped area of interest that has a lot of implications for a lot of kids.”

Rohan Anne can be reached at [email protected].