I have conducted over 30 presentations on vision screening to area education agencies, school nurses, nurse practitioners, optometrist, pediatricians, ophthalmic nurses and technicians. Some of the highlights of my vision screening career include being an invited guest at the vision screening in the preschool child symposium at the National Eye Institute in Maryland in 1998, working with Lions Club International in the late 1990’s to help provide funds for statewide vision screening programs and in 2005 I spoke at AAO Sunday night symposium on the use of automated vision screening devices.
In 2000, I was a founding member of Iowa Kidsight, our statewide vision screening program. The KidSight program currently uses the iScreen vision screener, as the sole analysis for the Iowa Kidsight program I have analyzed over 600,000 children ages 6 months to preschool age in the State of Iowa. I have also served as Iowa KidSight training coordinator developing all training materials and training thousands of volunteer Lions throughout the state as well as serving as intern program director on 2 separate occasions ( Figure 3). This year, 2020, marks Iowa KidSight’s 20th anniversary – “20 years of Keeping an Eye on Kids Sight”. The success of the program would not be what it is without the hard work and dedication of the KidSight team (Figure 4) and its volunteers. To date we have successfully screened 607,414 children in Iowa, referring 35,823 (5.9%) for amblyopia risk factors with a positive predictive value of 84.7%.
Although my work in vision screening has been in addition to my career as an orthoptist and I have loved every minute of it. In 2012 I was awarded the Warren Coleman Iowa Foundation award for my dedication to screening the children of Iowa ( Figure 5). I have been nominated for the Bonnie Strickland Champion for Children’s Vision in both 2018 and 2019. In 2019, I was presented with a banner for my work with Iowa Lion’s by the president of Lions Club International Foundation, Dr. Jung-You Choi. Also in January 2019 I was awarded University of Iowa Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences Employee of the Months and later that year the University of Iowa Staff Service Award for identify over 35,000 children in the state of Iowa with amblyopia risks factors. Currently I serve as a committee member of the America Association of Certified Orthoptists vision screening committee.
2020 brings with it many new challenges in life and in vision screening. As an orthoptist my mission of providing excellence in eye care will continue now and hopefully into the next 20 years.
Figure 1: Picture from a CNN blog on promoting early vision screening. (Post by: Miriam Falco – CNN Medical Managing Editor, February 13, 2013)
Figure 2: Wanda Pfeifer (center in pink) with volunteer lions at Iowa KidSight Leadership Meeting, 2004.
Figure 3: 2019 Iowa KidSight Staff (Pictured left to right: Lori Short, program manager, Wendy Cadena, office coordinator, Sarah Smith, special projects, Wanda Pfeifer, photoscreening analyst, Angie Garvey, program assistant, Deb Hatzky, follow-up coordinator, Dr. Bill Scott, medical director, Pat Mason, follow-up coordinator. (not present Sherri Panther, program assistant, Oscar Perez, Spanish follow-up coordinator)
Figure 4: Wanda Pfeifer, 2012, receiving the Warren Coleman Award from the Iowa Lions Leadership for her dedication to vision screening.
