Faculty, residents participate in community outreach

Department of Ophthalmology faculty and residents recently participated in two inspiring community outreach activities.

The first was “Doctor for a Day,” an outreach program for youth of color in the greater Seattle area. The aim is to encourage middle and high school students to consider medicine or other healthcare careers.

Organized by UW School of Medicine students, Doctor for a Day events comprise hands-on stations. Ophthalmology faculty and residents offered three tables for the students to explore vision testing, color vision, stereopsis, suturing practice, viewing the retina with indirect ophthalmoscopes, photographing their own retina with a camera, and other items like a cataract and AMD simulator. 

Doctor for a Day focuses on increasing the number of underrepresented students in health professions. Research shows that without intervention in elementary school, underrepresented students may lose interest in science and math by their teens and discount their abilities in those subjects before finishing high school.

More than 100 students in grades K-12 participated in the event in the Health Sciences Education Building on the Seattle campus. The neurosciences and pathology departments also participated.

Representing the Ophthalmology faculty were Drs. Karine Duarte Bojikian, Shu Feng, Laura Huang, Miel Sundararajan, and Jennifer Yu, who were joined by residents Drs. Johnson Huang, Nicole Mattson, and Ryan Yanagihara.

For more information about the Doctor for a Day program, visit their web page.

Assistant Professor Miel Sundararajan, MD, and residents also participated in the Seattle/King County Clinic, which brings together healthcare organizations, civic agencies, non-profits, private businesses, and volunteers from across the State of Washington to produce a giant free health clinic at Seattle Center. The four-day volunteer-driven clinic provides free dental, vision, and medical care to anyone in the region who struggles to access or afford healthcare.

The clinic provided more than $2.6 million in comprehensive healthcare to over 2,900 people. In its nine years of operation, the Clinic has provided free healthcare to more than 30,000 patients who have fallen through the region’s healthcare gaps. All were unable to afford or access the care they were seeking elsewhere.

For more information about the Seattle King County Clinic program, visit their web page.