Name: California Eye Specialists, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people with vision loss, announced Thursday it will receive a $400 million grant from the Department of Defense to help fight vision loss in the United States.
The California Eye Society, a non-profit organization based in Pasadena, California, said the $400-million donation will support the efforts of California Eye Associates, a division of the California Department of Public Health, to educate the public and improve the care of people with severe or complex vision loss.
The goal of the effort is to prevent blindness and related diseases, said Amy J. Ries, California Eye Specialist.
She said the group hopes to be able to provide more education and better medical care for the people who need it most.
“We know how hard it is to live with a severe or even a complex vision impairment,” Ries said.
“What we hope to do is help people with these conditions and the communities they live in better understand what’s needed to support their lives and to improve their quality of life.”
The California Department for Health Services (CalDHS) also announced the news, saying it will fund the grants through a program that will pay for the development of software and hardware that could help improve the eyes of those who are blind or have complex vision.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which is responsible for helping Americans who have been impacted by the pandemic, announced a similar program for the Blind and Visually Impaired in April, and the Department is expected to announce another program later this year.
The Eye Society said it will work with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to develop an automated program that could be used to identify people who are eligible for benefits under the VA’s Vision and Disability Assistance Program.
The U.K. government has announced a pilot project to develop automated systems that would track who receives benefits from the government.
In a separate announcement, the U-M Department of Education announced that it will be partnering with the Eye Society to create a digital learning tool that will be used by students to help them develop their own vision-based literacy skills.
The program, called Vision and the Arts for Students, will launch in early 2019 and will be led by U-S Department of Agriculture (USDA) Assistant Professor of Educational Technology John B. Tynes.
The project will also help to improve students’ reading, writing and math skills and to provide a way to connect students with resources.
“This is a great opportunity for the U of M and the entire state of California to learn about the unique challenges facing vision-impaired students and how to better support them,” B.J. Tunes, the university’s vice chancellor for student engagement and partnerships, said in a statement.
The grant is the largest in the history of the Eye Service, the nonprofit that has helped millions of Americans with vision disabilities in the U, including thousands of children.
In April, the group said it had received nearly $1.2 million from the U., which is a significant amount of funding for a nonprofit.
The group is also part of a larger national coalition of organizations that aim to raise $5.5 billion to fight the pandemics.
