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Have you ever gone to the shop without a list — and come back with snacks, batteries, and a houseplant… but forgot the one thing you actually needed? In my case, it’s usually nappies.
That is what it’s like when a school eye health programme has been planned without high quality data. We might pick up bits and pieces — maybe catch a few kids who need glasses — but we miss so many other essential needs: infections, allergies, even serious conditions that go unnoticed. Without a clear understanding, we don’t meet the real eye health needs of school-going children.
A School Eye Health Rapid Assessment (SEHRA) changes this approach entirely. Using Peek Vision’s software for data collection and analysis, SEHRA enables programmes to understand not just the epidemiological data — such as how many children have vision-impairing versus non-vision-impairing conditions — but also what these specific conditions are. More importantly, it categorises them by the types of services that will be required to address them.
But SEHRA goes beyond clinical data. It explores the broader environment where the school eye health programme will operate, gathering crucial information on sectoral legislation, policy and strategy, institutional and service delivery environment, human resources, supply chain, and potential barriers.
We developed SEHRA with an advisory group of leading eye health organisations and we’ve now completed nine SEHRAs, including five pilots, with partners across six countries: South Africa, India, Pakistan, Liberia, Uganda and Ethiopia. The results have provided interesting insights.
In Liberia, the SEHRA with Sightsavers was described as a catalyst for national strategic discussions about the future direction of school eye health. “The output of SEHRA is exactly what was needed, it’s doing what we hoped it would do!” Says Sumrana Yasmin, Technical Director for Eye Health at Sightsavers. “SEHRA provided invaluable data to scale our School Health Integrated Programme more effectively. We welcome this tool, which assists in designing, planning, implementing, and monitoring a school eye health programme.” Sightsavers is now planning to implement SEHRA in Kenya and Nigeria in the coming months.
The SEHRA completed in Uganda with EYElliance and Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) is the most representative school eye health survey ever done in the country. Maggie Dawson from EYElliance says: “The SEHRA has facilitated discussion both at Ministries of Health and Education, to ensure that all children, especially the most vulnerable, receive the eyeglasses they need to thrive in school. The data gathered from this assessment will not only guide resource prioritization but also inform policy development and institutional frameworks, laying the foundation for a national-scale, evidence-based school eye health initiative.” The Ministry of Education has recently used the data to advocate for additional funding allocations from development partners.
Finally, the data from India with Dr Shroff’s Charity Eye Hospital provides exciting validation of SEHRA’s reliability. When we compared SEHRA findings with programme data from the same region, the results were remarkably similar, confirming SEHRA’s accuracy as a baseline assessment tool and what programmes will actually encounter in the field.
So, the next time you venture out shopping, remember to look in your fridge first to see what’s already there. Similarly, conducting a SEHRA before implementing a school eye health programme gives you that essential baseline — showing you what eye health services and needs already exist, so you can plan for what’s missing.
Photo credit: Priya Morjaria
