CooperVision’s Give Brightly and Generation Sight programs foster new abilities for underserved communities

Image credit: Adobe Stock / ©Irina Schmidt

Jami Parsons Malloy, OD, FAAO, associate professor at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, and her students are currently working with CooperVision’s Give Brightly and Generation Sight programs. Both programs provide vision care solutions and resources to underserved communities.

The programs value making eye care affordable for these communities, with Malloy saying they allow for patients to receive lenses and other services who otherwise wouldn’t be able to pay for them.

“The goal really is to provide care to patients who wouldn't necessarily be able to access it, and additionally increase awareness around myopia management and its utility and its utilization within the community as well,” Malloy said.

A benefit of these programs is being able to work with new patients, especially those who are new to a certain area. Malloy says CooperVision’s Give Brightly and Generation Sight programs increase her and her students access to providing care, and gives students the opportunity to practice through fitting patients for contact lenses. On a community level, she also says the programs provides a space for patients to come in for services that may have higher rates at other practices.

“We have different health centers that we're affiliated with,” Malloy said. “Our health center doctors and students that see patients there will often refer in to our on-campus clinic and allow us to see patients in our on-campus clinic, and again, getting to a wider net of people because it spans across a few different communities.”

While the programs offer many new opportunities for education and growth for students, there are some challenges that arise when working with a new clientele.

“Some of the challenges that we have (are) particularly with the Generation Sight aspect of it and the myopia management aspect,” Malloy said. “We have a really high percentage of patients who are non-English speakers, or English is not the primary language.”

Malloy says this factor comes into play most when working with children, as the parent and the patient need to be able to understand what an optometrist is planning to do. However, she says the integration of translation services has allowed for clearer communication between patients, students, and optometrists.

“We are in a community that has a really very diverse patient population, and certainly with getting people from different countries all of the time, I think it’s really exciting,” Malloy said. “It certainly increases the types of things that our students get to see, but also add that extra challenge for us about how do we communicate in a way that's really effective across different cultures, in addition to the different languages that are there.”

Students have received the programs with excitement, with Malloy saying all of them finding new patients to benefit at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences’ on-campus health center clinics. Malloy says they find similarities in their lives as college students with their patients, as both must factor in living on a strict budget and the limited resources that come with paying for everyday needs.

This level of understanding is also the reason why Malloy and her students chose to work with CooperVision. From a young age, she says her mother instilled in her the importance of giving back to underserved communities. Throughout her career, Malloy has seen how giving access to vision care for these groups of people has created newfound confidence and ability in her patients.

“It’s just so exciting to be able to provide this care to patients, to give that to them and to allow them to do the things that you and I take for granted,” Malloy said. “I don't think about when I have to drive to work about whether or not I can do that, or walking around in my house or in my community and saying like, ‘Oh, am I seeing things the way that I need to?’ Being able to do that for our patients I think it's just such a rewarding thing and having our students be able to see that and be part of that as well as the next generation of optometrists, it's such an exciting thing to see and to be a part of.”