Study: Poor kids less likely to get vision exams

Kids from less affluent homes, even when they have health insurance, are not as likely as others to get vision screenings that can identify conditions like lazy eye before the damage becomes irreversible, a new study found.

Researchers at the University of Michigan examined commercial health insurance claims data between 2001 and 2014 for nearly 900,000 children from birth to age 14. They tracked how often kids at different family income levels visited ophthalmologists and optometrists and the diagnosis rates for strabismus (cross-eyed or wall-eyed) and amblyopia (lazy eye).

The two conditions are relatively common, serious eye diseases in children. Because the eyes are seeing different things, the brain suppresses the vision in one eye. If not corrected by age 10, either condition can result in permanent vision loss.

Children in families with the lowest net worth of less than $25,000 a year had 16 percent fewer eye care visits than those in the middle-income category of $150,000 to $250,000, the study found. Meanwhile, kids from families with the highest net worth of $500,000 or more had 19 percent more visits to eye care professionals than those in the middle-income group.

Lower income kids were also less likely to be diagnosed with strabismus or amblyopia than children from higher income families. By age 10, an estimated 3.6 percent of children in the lowest income category were diagnosed with strabismus, and 2 percent were diagnosed with amblyopia, the study found. For kids in the highest income bracket, the estimated diagnoses were 5.9 percent for strabismus and 3.1 percent for amblyopia.