Hindsight is 20/20: Looking Back on My Year of Service

Reflecting on my service term at the Illinois Eye Institute at Princeton Elementary School, I can't help but notice how different it looks than I ever would have expected. To be fair, I had absolutely no idea what to expect, so it is not too hard to diverge from that blurry outlook. However, as the year progressed, so did the clarity of what my decision to become a part of NHC Chicago has afforded me.

I have seen that public health organizations must constantly evolve and rely on the innovation of individuals to continue this growth. Part of my position as an NHC member was to coordinate referrals for the school-based vision clinics that travel to schools throughout Chicago providing basic vision exams for students. After the initial exams, I received the information on the 500-700 students per month who were referred for follow up care, so I could help them to access the care they needed. I had little instruction about how to make this happen, which was a bit unnerving, but over the year, I began to add to the system in place. I established a set of resources to offer parents, including clinics close by that accepted their insurance, and developed a structure for more effectively organizing and documenting these referrals. While it is nowhere close to perfect, it will hopefully stand as a base for future NHC members to continue to improve on. This year, I have come to know that innovation requires both the ability to be bold and to also accept that the solution will never be perfect, but rather a step on the way to something better.

I have also seen that public health is a balance between ideals and realities. Serving at the Princeton Clinic, interacting with our patients, and learning what goes on behind the scenes has shown me that ambitions and intentions, while very much necessary, must work in harmony with resources and realities in order to make a difference. Going forward, this understanding has helped cement my desire to continue pursuing public health and service work alongside and also within my career in medicine.

Finally, I have seen that as much as I have learned and grown over this past year, my service was not about me. Every day when a new group of children arrived at the Princeton Clinic, the focus of every single person in the building shifted to their role in serving these kids. From teaching them about their eyes during the numerous vision tests and seeing their faces when they pick out the perfect pair of glasses that make the world clearer to reassuring them that we do not in fact take their eyes away as part of the exam, working with our patients has been the best part of my service term, by far. Though I may not have known exactly what to expect going into this year, in hindsight, becoming a member of the National Health Corps has been one of the best decisions I have ever made.

This blog post was written by NHC Chicago member Kelly Blair.

Kelly serves as a Vision Promoter at Illinois Eye Institute at Princeton Elementary School.