Community

Champlain Valley Head Start (CVHS) has been partnering with Area Health Education Centers Program (AHEC) to create vision and hearing resources for families at CVHS. When looking at health data at CVHS, gaps have been found in follow up care for vision and hearing concerns. It has also been noted that it would be helpful for families to better understand their children’s vision and hearing diagnoses. Six UVM medical students were matched with CVHS to work on a project to create handouts that discuss topics like astigmatism, hyperopia, myopia, PE tubes, and cochlear implants. The medical students joined our Family Connections Program on multiple occasions to sit down and interview our CVHS families to ask them how they like to receive information, what they thought about the handouts that have been created, and what would feel most helpful to them when understanding their child’s diagnosis. The goal of the project is to create resources that will benefit families and reflect their input from the interviews. CVHS also aims to get these handouts translated into different languages to make them more accessible to the families we serve. This partnership has not only created better dialogue between community agencies, but is helping our community in a real and tangible way.