Unite For Sight Health Festival Day: A National Event For Thousands of Children By A Thousand Student Volunteers

On April 3, more than 2,500 young children and their families will participate in Unite For Sight Health Festival Day in cities nationwide, including New York City, New Haven, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Boston, Chicago, Washington DC, and Pittsburgh. Congressional Representatives are expected to participate in the events, including Representative Rosa De Lauro in New Haven, Connecticut.

(PRWEB) March 8, 2004 --On April 3, more than 2,500 young children and their families will participate in Unite For Sight Health Festival Day in cities nationwide, including New York City, New Haven, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Boston, Chicago, Washington DC, and Pittsburgh. Congressional Representatives are expected to participate in the events, including Representative Rosa De Lauro in New Haven, Connecticut.

Unite For Sight Health Festival Day will prevent blindness among children through free preliminary vision screenings for children and their parents, a health insurance drive to enroll the uninsured in free health coverage programs, and vision education programs. Activities include optical illusions and using arts and crafts to construct an eye model.

The goal of Unite For Sight Health Festival Day is to improve school readiness by detecting undiagnosed vision problems, including amblyopia. The National Eye Institute estimates that more than 500,000 children in the United States become blind in one eye each year primarily because they never had a vision screening to diagnose and treat amblyopia. Additionally, an estimated 10 million children age 10 and younger have vision problems that hinder learning. Unite For Sight Health Festival Day will therefore help to transform education for the countrys most vulnerable children.

Unite For Sight, a 501©3 nonprofit organization that tackles eye and health care issues, has 50 chapters established at universities and medical schools throughout the country. Unite For Sight, founded by Jennifer Staple as a sophomore college student at Yale in Fall 2000, is an international network of 1,000 students who work to build healthier communities through disease prevention, eye health promotion, and health education.