Dr. James Hess: Minnesota Optometrist's Humanitarian Services Spans Decades and Continents

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Dr. James Hess: Minnesota Optometrist's Humanitarian Services Spans Decades and Continents

Dr. James Hess, a family eye doctor in practice at the Crystal Vision Clinic, Crystal, Minnesota took his first vision care volunteer trip 27 years ago as a senior at the Illinois College of Optometry, when he went to Honduras with the Volunteer Optometric Services to Humanity (VOSH). He quickly became hooked. In his 26 years as a practicing optometrist, Dr. Hess has taken 35 international trips with VOSH, many of which he has led. He and wife Margie, a retired optician, have no plans to stop any time soon.

Dr. Hess became the president of the VOSH Minnesota chapter in 1983, and has been its president and driving force ever since. Headquarters are in the lower level of the Crystal Vision Clinic, where supplies such as thousands of pairs of prescription glasses are compiled for each trip. These are all donated by patients, volunteers, Lions Clubs and other optometrist offices and VOSH groups. Before the glasses are packed for VOSH trips, they are sorted, neutralized (checked for prescription strength) and marked.

How many pairs of glasses does one trip require? The math is simple, but requires a staggering number of glasses in order to adequately fill the right prescription for each patient. “Let’s say you’re going on a trip for a 3-4 day clinic, and anticipate examining 1,000 patients per day,” said Dr. Hess. “Then you’d need probably 3,000 to 4,000 pairs of glasses, so you need to bring along10, 000 pairs in a range of corrections, all donated.”

The primary mission of the VOSH trips is to correct vision for thousands of people in underdeveloped and developing countries, who would not otherwise have access to eye and vision healthcare. State VOSH organizations share volunteering staffing for trips, and VOSH always attempts to recruit enough optometrists so that eye diseases like glaucoma and conditions such as eyelid growths and environmental irritations can be treated along with vision correction. Usually an autorefractor is brought along for accurate vision checks, so that other volunteers trained in using this equipment can free the eye doctors up to spend time with patients who have eye conditions.

“The appreciation that people express is tremendous, and gives so much meaning to what we do,” said Dr. Hess. “I think that once you have participated in a trip, you really want to do it again. Of course, we can only treat chronic conditions in the here and now, and the need is tremendous for ongoing care and medicine. We have to approach it as helping one person at a time,” he said.

The temporary clinics set up by sponsoring groups, such as a Lions Club, Rotary Club or church, and coordinated on site by the VOSH team, are always crowded. When the news that free glasses will be given away travels, the rush is on, and planning can include keeping the clinic location undisclosed until it opens.

“Sometimes the line of waiting patients goes on for about as far as you can see,” said Dr. Hess, “but we have never been in danger, and have never had a life- threatening incident.” And that includes trips to Nicaragua right after the Sandinistas left power, and four times in Columbia, South America during the turbulent ‘80s.

The destination of a VOSH trip into the remote stretches of the Amazon River was a village of the Yagua Indians, who still wear their traditional grass skirts and have only occasional contact with outsiders, not to mention healthcare professionals. “I remember this fellow was so amazed that with his new glasses he could see the other side of the river,” said Hess. A trip to Lima, Peru in January2004 resulted in helping 2,300 patients.

A trip to the Ukraine in 2003, in conjunction with a Maple Grove humanitarian group, Hand-in Hand Together, was an eye opener for the American eye doctors, who visited a clinic where the examination and clinic equipment was vintage 1930’s. Again, says Hess, the people were not only grateful, but also warm and hospitable.

Dr. Hess recounted the endless lines of patients who wait for treatment at every location. “A group of 40 of us were in Tanzania, Africa in the mid-80’s,” he said, “and we moved around the country in small groups to treat 10,000 people who needed glasses or treatment for eye diseases or disorders.”

The organization offers seven hours of CEU education credits for optometrists, and trips to these usually exotic and far-off places offer a chance to meet the people first hand, with economical hotel rates set up by the sponsoring organization, and extra days to side trips are often offered. In very remote areas, the local hosts and their families offer their homes for lodging in lieu of hotels.

Dr. Hess and his wife Margie, who long worked in the clinic with him as an optician and began traveling with the VOSH trips 25 years ago, are planning two trips this year, one with the LoLoma Foundation in the vicinity of Fiji, and a Minnesota VOSH trip at the end of April to the Transylvanian Alps in Romania. This trip is full, and boasts seven optometrists among its ranks. This is not always the case, says Hess, who encourages every optometrist, at some time during his or her career, to come along. “It is such a rewarding, even humbling experience,” said Dr. Hess. “It is also a chance to be a true ambassador from our country.”

Interested in VOSH? You don’t have to be an optometrist to volunteer, and the trips tend to be economical, with reasonable airfares as well as hotel rates. Visit VOSH International at www.VOSH.org, and the Minnesota chapter at www.VOSHminnesota.org.

Dr. Hess is also an active member of the Minnesota Optometric Association. He is one of four optometrists at the Crystal Vision Clinic, along with Drs. Scott Endres, Scott Frick, Mary Laconic and Katie Olineck, and offices in Maple Grove and Crystal. Dr. Hess lives with his wife, Margie in Maple Grove, and by marriage, he is the proud grandfather of four.

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