News from the AOA's Blog

For the first time in its more than 100-year history, the association will induct its first woman as president when Dori Carlson, O.D., takes the helm next summer. For Dr. Carlson, however, this is just par for the course.

Since opening her practice with husband Mark Helgeson, O.D., in Park River, N.D., in 1990, and a second location in Grafton, N.D., Dr. Carlson has made it her mission to take optometry to another level where young patients receive proactive care to prevent problems later in life – often when it is too late.

“I live in rural North Dakota. Most of the people who live here are older, so half of my office visits in any given day are with people who are over 60,” Dr. Carlson said. “It’s an aging population. There are not a lot of people moving into the area and not a lot of people are being born, but we know those are the patients that we need to see.”

As she began treating her older patients, Dr. Carlson said she realized that if she and her team could help prevent some of the problems that occurred later in life, they could make a positive difference overall. That meant reaching out and serving as many children as possible.

“Both my husband and I got involved in training school nurses, public health nurses and the staff from Head Start,” Dr. Carlson said. “We worked with them on how to do screenings for kids. We were also involved with screenings for kids as well. But what we found, and what was frustrating, is that it sometimes gave a false sense of security to parents.”

And then InfantSEE® came along.

At that point in time, Dr. Carlson was a mom of two young children. One of her first assignments when she joined the board in 2004 was to serve as the liaison to the InfantSEE® committee. When reflecting on how she would care for her own children, she thought, “There is a better way to do this.”

“As a said, I treated older patients who would have developmental vision problems, like amblyopia, and now I’m dealing with glaucoma or macular degeneration in their only good eye,” Dr. Carlson said. “Had they had some intervention when they were a child, I wouldn’t be dealing with the fact that they only have one good eye and now we are trying to save the vision from some age-related problem.

“So when I look at my aging patients and what could have been done, had something been done a long time ago, I started to look at these young kids and realized that what we were doing all these years wasn’t working. We needed to do something different. That something different in my mind was seeing kids earlier than what we had been advocating before.”

Dr. Carlson said it is her mission to see as many infants as she can. Each year, she said, about 75 kids are born in the county where she lives. “I made up in my mind that there is no reason we cannot see every one of these kids for an InfantSEE® exam,” she said.

Over the last two years, so far, they have seen about two-thirds of the infants who are born in the county. As a result, she sees a lot more 3-year-olds, as well as 5-year-olds, who have never had an eye examination because now there is a better level of awareness among parents. There are challenges because of the remote area. Still, Dr. Carlson doesn’t let that stop her.

“There’s no reason why every child in the U.S., with the resources that we have, shouldn’t have access to health care, eye care and the ability to be ready for school,” she said. “If you look at this from the picture of ‘What do we do when we are on the AOA Board?’ we advocate for the profession. That’s our No. 1 job as board members. If we’re talking about health care reform, access to patients, being treated equally among other professions and non-discrimination, being an advocate is a big portion of it. And as a health care provider, being an advocate for children is not that much different. “

“It all ties together in a continuum of care that starts in the first year of life,” she said. “What we do now, early in life, it has an effect on us later in life.”

Her practice, Heartland Eye Care, also includes Michelle Carter, O.D., and a staff of seven who provide a full, comprehensive range of services that includes eye examinations; optical dispensing; contact lenses; treatment of eye conditions such as conjunctivitis; injuries and dry eyes; eye diseases; and some low vision services. 

As passionate as Dr. Carlson is about her profession and the path that it’s taking with health care reform, ironically, becoming an optometrist was not something that she initially pursued.

“I came about it in an around-about fashion,” Dr. Carlson said. “I wore glasses in third grade, so I was always familiar with going to my optometrist’s office. But I didn’t think about optometry until college. I started out in engineering.”

Dr. Carlson said that she quickly realized she wanted to interact with people. So she changed her educational plans and began to pursue a career in optometry. “It was familiar, I was interested in it, and I thought it was a good profession,” she said.

Recent times have brought about new trends for optometry as a profession.

“Now, nearly 70 percent of all students who graduate from optometry school are women,” Dr. Carlson said. Partly because of this trend, Dr. Carlson plans to visit every optometry school nationwide over the next two years to share information about both the profession and AOA and, hopefully, inspire them to use their profession as a way to provide needed vision care to the youngest patients and those who might not have access to adequate health care services. She will also stress the importance of membership in the professional association.

“What’s happening now is that our board is starting to reflect what the younger demographics of our profession looks like,” Dr. Carlson said, referring to herself and AOA Trustees Andrea Thau, O.D., of New York and Hilary Hawthorne, O.D., of Los Angeles. “I want to somehow touch some of the lives of those individuals so that they see the importance of being involved—not that it hasn’t been done, before because it certainly has. It’s just a different messenger. You just never know who you might touch.”

To illustrate her point, she shared a couple of stories that inspire her professionally. One was the first time she attended an American Public Health Association Meeting 21 years ago. The president of Planned Parenthood, Faye Wattleton, gave the meeting’s keynote address.

“To this day I still remember her, and I thought, ‘What a dynamic, charismatic woman,’” Dr. Carlson said. “She gave this incredible speech and I still remember parts of her speech. I never talked to her, but I still remember it and I just thought – Wow!”

Her second story is more recent and involves one of her patients. “Yesterday I had a patient come in, a woman in her mid-30s, and I see her two daughters,” Dr. Carlson said. “There was a press release in my local paper about the fact that I was president-elect of the AOA. Her 8-year-old daughter cut it out and put it on the refrigerator. I was talking to her mom, and I said, ‘Really?’ and she said, ‘Oh yeah. Brooke thinks the world of you, and she wants to be like you someday.’ So, you just never know who you might touch. That’s what I hope. That maybe somehow, in some shape or fashion, there will be a message that’s said in a little different way that might motivate somebody to be a part of our association and our profession.”