California kids are going without vision care, and the problem is getting worse
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When Kekoa Gittens was 3, his preschool teacher told his mother he was a problem.He couldn’t sit still.
He didn’t participate.When other kids learned the alphabet, he didn’t pay attention.The next year, Kekoa’s classroom problems worsened.
His mother, Sonia Gittens, took him to his pediatrician, who referred the boy to an eye doctor.That doctor looked at the back of Kekoa’s eyes and diagnosed him with myopic degeneration, a dramatic form of nearsightedness.“They are too little.They don’t know how to express themselves and say, ‘I cannot see it, teacher,’ ” said Sonia Gittens, who lives in the Marin County town of Corte Madera.Today, Kekoa is a successful high schooler, but too many kids don’t get their eyes checked until they’re far behind in school.Vision problems, particularly nearsightedness, have grown more common among American children.
Roughly one in four school-age kids, or 25%, wear glasses or contacts, a proportion that increases as kids get older, according to 2019 federal survey data.In California too few children on Medi-Cal like Kekoa are getting their eyes checked, and the problem is growing worse.Just 16% of school-age kids on Medi-Cal saw an eye doctor between 2022 and 2024 for first-time eye exams, continuing vision checkups or glasses, according to a report commissioned by the California Optometric Assn.
That’s down from 19% eight years earlier.The report, based on two years of Medi-Cal data, suggests that the state is moving in the wrong direction even as eye problems become more prevalent among kids.Medi-Cal provides insurance for low-income Californians and those with disabilities.“Every day when I see these children it is always a surprise to me that the kids are not getting the care they need,” said Ida Chung, a pediatric optometrist and an associate dean at Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona.The trend indicat...