Kristen Kerber, OD, MS, FAAO, an associate professor at the New England College of Optometry (NECO), is driven to helping children, particularly those from low-income families, access the vision care they need. Dr. Kerber is also a pediatric optometrist at The Dimock Center, a community health center that has a clinical relationship with NECO. Her passion for myopia management and community advocacy has driven her to find and utilize all programs that provide essential eye care services to underserved populations.
Dr. Kerber’s journey began as a student at NECO, where she was inspired by the community health programs that she encountered during her rotations in the school’s community health clinics. “I saw the impact of programs designed to provide services to people who couldn’t afford them,” she recalls. “When I started practicing, I was determined to continue this mission, particularly in the area of myopia management.”
For the past four years, Dr. Kerber has been actively involved in CooperVision’s Adopt-a-Patient program, now known as the Give Brightly program. This initiative with academic eye care centers provides an annual supply of contact lenses to deserving, low-income patients. More recently, she has also participated in the Generation Sight program, a similar program that offers MiSight 1 day and Paragon CRT contact lenses to children in need for as long as they require treatment. “These programs have allowed me to provide countless children with high-quality eye care and the materials they need to live their fullest lives,” she says.
INSPIRING THE NEXT GENERATION OF ODs
Going into her eighth year of teaching and working with students in the health center, Dr. Kerber is now passing her passion for myopia management and community service along to her students. She involves them in both the Give Brightly and Generation Sight programs, giving them real-world experience in shaping the health of their communities. “I work with second, third, and fourth-year students, as well as two residents,” she explains. “We hold roundtable discussions about the challenges of myopia control, including cost and availability,” she says. “Not only does it raise awareness, it also gets them excited about myopia management and the impact they can make.”
Dr. Kerber’s work with CooperVision has been transformative for many of her patients. “I encountered the Adopt-a-Patient program as a student, and it opened my eyes to the importance of access,” she says. “When I joined NECO faculty, I knew I wanted to be involved. Before Generation Sight launched in 2023, Dr. Kerber would—and still does—use the other program to fit patients with multifocal and multifocal toric lenses. With a heavily Hispanic patient base, many of whom have astigmatism, this has been particularly helpful.
The Generation Sight program has also been a significant addition. It has helped her bring that daily disposable wear option to patients. “The excitement is immense, especially for younger children who might not be as diligent with the cleaning regimens required with monthly lenses,” Dr. Kerber notes. She is grateful that CooperVision has committed to helping these young patients for as long as they need MiSight 1 day soft contact lenses.
HEARTFELT IMPACT
Dr. Kerber shares a touching story of a 12-year-old patient with a -5.00D prescription. Wearing eyeglasses with her high prescription embarrassed her. Dr. Kerber had seen this young patient over the years and had put her on low-dose atropine therapy. The patient’s mother was resistant to contact lenses, Dr. Kerber recalls. With Generation Sight, however, Dr. Kerber mentioned that she now had a one-day lens option that would allow this girl to see more clearly during the day and slow her myopia progression. “Seeing her happiness when she put these lenses on was incredible. I’ve seen her since, and her myopia has stabilized. We’re keeping her on low-dose atropine, too, since she has had no side effects.”
Dr. Kerber says that she appreciates that these programs can alleviate guilt for parents of these young children. “Many of our pediatric patients’ parents work multiple jobs and face food or housing insecurity. It’s challenging as a provider to advocate for myopia management when I know that these families face critical financial situations. This program allows them to know that they’re doing the best for their children. “It would be very difficult to say to parents that there are other options available, but we are not going to talk about them because of their cost.”
FINDING RESOURCES
On the days when Dr. Kerber is not at the health center, she’s at NECO teaching or working on research. She can leverage that latter experience to help her patients as well. For example, she received a donation of a Zeiss IOLMaster from another NECO lab. Now she and her students can take axial length measurements and incorporate those into the treatment management and patient education. Additionally, “we have two eyeglasses’ studies going on for providing myopia management in spectacle correction. The college is also part of a post-market MiSight 1 day study, so I can offer this access to research studies to my patients,” she says.
She is hopeful, too, that her commitment to finding ways to help her patients access care makes an impression on students. “They see both the exciting and challenging aspects of optometry. My hope is that my students will continue to seek out programs and grants to support their patients,” she says.
That has the secondary effect of encouraging her students to stay current with research, even when they leave the academic environment. “When we stay on the cutting edge, that benefits everyone involved.”
Read about the research ongoing at NECO’s Children’s Vision Lab.
From the archives: How NECO used COVID-19 restrictions to test telemedicine capabilities.
