- Welcome to American Black Journal.

I'm your host, Stephen Henderson.

April is National Minority Health Month, and that's a time to draw attention to the health disparities that affect minority communities and promote actions to improve health outcomes.

My first guest is doing just that.

Dr. Cleamon Moorer Jr. founded Eye Care for Detroit.

Now, that's a nonprofit that's helping home-bound and underserved residents get access to vision care.

The organization operates the city's first walk-in eyecare clinic and a mobile unit that services patients in their homes.

I'd like to welcome Dr. Moorer to American Black Journal.

Great to have you here.

- Thank you, Stephen.

Pleasure to be here.

- Yeah, so, you know, when we think about healthcare and healthcare challenges, I mean, you know, there's no question that in cities like Detroit, in the African-American community, they are more acute than they are in other places.

But I'm not sure that we always are thinking about the total health picture, right?

We're thinking about access to primary care in most instances, but eyecare is just as important.

- Yes, it is.

- Talk about the work that you're doing just to make sure that folks here have access to good eyecare.

- Absolutely, Stephen, thank you.

So it seems that vision care is often back burner in a lot of people's healthcare journey, where a person has a reaction to a comorbidity.

"Blood pressure's a little high.

My numbers have exceeded their thresholds, and now my vision is blurry.

What should I do," right?

So we want to educate and engage the local community in the importance of vision care so that it's not reactive, but more so proactive.

Similar to, you know, children starting their first day at school.

Just get out and talk with seniors.

- Yeah.

- Yes.

- How important is that early eye care, you know, to children, to young people as they get, you know, older into adulthood?

- Stephen, it means everything.

Our optometrists and ophthalmologists tell us that if we can detect glaucoma early on, if we could detect early signs of cataracts or macular degeneration, the advancement of those diseases in many cases could be cut off.

- Can be slipped.

- Yes, absolutely.

- Yeah.

- For sure.

- You know, the problems that we have getting people access to eye care, are they kinda part and parcel with regular healthcare access or there are other barriers that also play a role in this one?

- There's other barriers, Stephen.

So there is a shortage of eyecare professionals within the city of Detroit.

So if you look at the ratio of one eyecare professional for every 15,000 to 20,000 Detroiters versus some of our counterparts in Kent County and Oakland County around the state of Michigan that have a one to 1200 or one to 1500 ratio.

- [Stephen] Wow, that's a dramatic difference.

- Absolutely.

Yes, it is.

But there are a lot of retail venues that sell fashionable eyewear.

- Right, which is not the same thing as going to see the eye doctor.

- No, one of our mottos, Stephen, is we definitely care how people look, but more importantly we care how people see.

- How you see, right.

- So let's dive deeper.

Let's dive deeper in and analyze and see if we could diagnose and prevent the progression of eye health disease.

- Yeah, what do you do about that?

How do we attack that problem of, you know, the availability of eyecare?

- Well, mobilizing it has been our solution, right?

Where we understand that due to transportation barriers, lack of access, not knowing where to go, cost, expense, and then of course the sandwich generation, the working adult that needs to take an elderly parent to an eyecare appointment turns into an all day affair.

So we've looked to streamline that process by developing a mobile outfit to go to patients' homes, to go out there in the senior community and cut that, cut that gap.

- Yeah, is that a long-term fix?

- I do believe so.

In the event that we can engage more ophthalmology students from local colleges and universities as well as optometry students into the field to create clinical-based field experiences under licensed optometrists and ophthalmologists.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Certainly.

- Talk about what you're seeing when you're going to, I assume, like senior centers in some cases, or just say patients homes.

How much, is there a gap, I guess, in the share that people are getting?

- Stephen, we are seeing stickier cataracts, for lack of a better phrase, where a person has advanced blindness, legal blindness, due to their cataracts not being removed.

We're seeing mac degeneration to an extent where a person has lost all of their peripheral vision and it's just extremely-- - You can see it straightforward.

- Absolutely.

Very myopic.

And not being able to see what's in front of them, but necessarily what is around them.

- Yeah.

Obviously, for conditions like that, it's not just initial visit, but, you know, long-term care.

- Long-term care and also getting to the loved one or caregiver within that household or community to also try to address vision health or vision care issues.

- Yeah, yeah.

Right.

I mean, you go to see one person, you've got a family.

- It's a family affair.

And everybody needs to go to eyecare.

- Yes, indeed.

- Yeah.

So I wanna have you talk also about your own personal story, which is really inspiring, is how you come to this space.

- Stephen, my own personal journey inspired my work.

I was born with congenital cataracts, which is rare.

However, the cataracts progressed throughout the years.

So growing up in the 80's and into the 90's, my vision progressively got worse.

So by the age of 20 going on 21, hey, I was legally blind.

- Wow.

- Yes.

- So talk about what that was like.

I mean, as a child, how you get to that point?

So imagine, Stephen, a glass of water that has an eye dropper that drops driplets of milk or droplets of milk into that glass.

Over time, with more droplets of milk, the water is cloudy and you're trying to look through a cloudy or opaque vision of whatever's in front of you or around you.

So it progressively got worse.

- Yeah, and you were not able to get care for this?

- No, no.

- What was the reason for that?

My parents had a small business, Livernois, C&M Collision.

You know, Bump n Pay.

- You know, which Detroit and Livernois-- - Lots of businesses like that.

- That's right.

- Right.

- And the small business owner's insurance plan they had did not.

- Did not cover eyecare.

- Did not cover eyecare, let alone eyecare surgery.

- Really?

- Yeah.

- So how common is that that people who have insurance don't get eyecare insurance?

- So it really depends on how the insurance plan is structured.

So granted, if there is a medical issue or a diagnosis, an eyecare professional can see that patient for that medical diagnosis.

If it's not medical per se, and it's a vision plan, it turns into an add-on.

It's an add-on to the regular healthcare.

- Absolutely, so being a healthy kid, you know, growing up, despite some allergies here and there and poor vision, it didn't fall under medical.

- Wow, so what was the solution that your parents found?

- Oh, so my mother, my beloved mother, sought out different funding sources.

She was blessed enough to find the Sinai Grace Guild at the time.

She wrote a letter to the board 'cause I went to Sinai throughout the years.

That's where my eyecare professionals, my ophthalmologists were.

And the board decided to cover the removal.

- Oh, wow.

- Yes, they did.

So forever grateful.

- Yeah.

Is it that generosity that inspires your-- - It fuels it.

- Return to that work.

- It certainly fuels it, Stephen.

I did promise her upon her passing that I would pay it forward and try to help as many Detroiters as possible.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Yes.

- I mean, it also is a great lesson.

And the idea of things never really being too late.

It's never too late to do something, right?

You essentially had lost your vision.

- Yes.

- At the age of 21.

- Absolutely.

- But today, you're able to treat other people.

- There you go, that's it.

- Because somebody intervened.

- Totally.

Totally, Stephen.

And so I think the combination of both sympathy and empathy, the sympathy of, "I feel sorry for you.

I understand."

But empathy, "I lived it first hand."

- I've been here.

- Yes.

- How many people are you able to reach with the mobile?

- Yeah, the goal is 40,000.

So we are taking on like 50 to 60 patients or home bound folks a week, you know?

But the aim is to get to all of Detroit's home bound community out there.

- Yeah, and what's the financial support for this that closes that gap for folks that don't have insurance?

- You know, billing, we typically try to bill for those that are insured.

But Stephen, to answer that question, to cover the entire community, we've estimated a fee or a cost of 250 to $300 to get a person a comprehensive exam, a pair eyeglasses, and referrals to specialists.

So covering 40,000 Detroiters is a 10 million to $12 million undertaking.

It certainly is.

- Somebody's gotta step up.

- Somebody has to.

- Yes, and we know that there's a generous philanthropic community within the state of Michigan, as well as the country that could help us fit that bill.

- Yeah, all right.

Dr. Moorer, congratulations on the work.

And thank you very much for being here.

- My pleasure.

Thank you for having me, Stephen.