Midwestern University to open Arizona's first optometry school

Midwestern University to open Arizona's first optometry school
Mar. 10, 2009
Lesley Wright
The Arizona Republic

Midwestern University will welcome 50 of the state's first optometry students in August.

Four years later, the new doctors of optometry, known as ODs, will find patients with a wide variety of needs right at their doorstep.

On one hand, Arizona has a high percentage of children under 18. Making up more than one-quarter of the population, these children suffer from conditions such as "lazy eye," which are best treated if caught at a young age.

On the other hand, the state also has a large and growing population of the elderly - nearly 13 percent of Arizona residents are 65 years or older - who routinely suffer from macular degeneration, low vision and other ailments.

The needs of the elderly are becoming particularly acute in Surprise and other areas of the West Valley, Midwestern officials said.

If that is not enough, the high count of Hispanics and Native Americans, who suffer disproportionately from eye diseases related to diabetes, will offer a ready-made audience for newly minted optometrists.

Many of them will try their skills first at Midwestern's new Eye Institute, which is being built next to its existing public clinic. The institute should be open by next spring.

Hector Santiago, the new dean of Midwestern's Arizona College of Optometry, is ready for it all.

"We are dedicated to a strong program with a research component," said Santiago, who has served a number of dean posts at the Inter American University of Puerto Rico's School of Optometry. "There are so many needs in the state. I think we need to accommodate those needs."

Optometrists are the primary eye doctors, trained to "detect, diagnose and manage visual dysfunctions and eye diseases," Santiago said.

Students in the school, along with 15 faculty members, will work closely with the other medical disciplines at Midwestern as part of the school's integrated health care system.

Primary care doctors already send patients to the optometry section of the Midwestern University Clinic, on the campus southeast of Utopia Road and 59th Avenue.

Anthony Will, a professor and primary doctor at the clinic, recently discovered a somewhat rare eye condition in one patient and was able to call in a practicing optometrist in the same building.

"One of the missions of the clinic is a team approach," Will said. "I'll be the first to admit it - I learn something every day."

It is a model, Santiago said, for how great medical care can be.

"You've got a team of people looking at you," Santiago said.

Kathleen Goeppinger, the university's chief executive, said the school hopes to address the uneven distribution of Arizona's practicing optometrists. Only 65 of the 138 towns and cities in Arizona have an optometrist.

Goeppinger said that students often tend to stay and work where they intern, including rural areas.

"We give them a taste of rural medicine and many of them do stay," she said. "Not everyone wants to live in an urban area."

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