DOWAGIAC — Donning a maroon polo shirt, which displays a multicolored logo for Southwest Vision Center, Deven Lambart stood in front a group of people Thursday afternoon and spoke to them as they took their lunch breaks from work.

“20/20 isn’t everything,” Lambart said, addressing members of the Dowagiac Rotary Club inside the Elks building on Riverside Drive. “That’s kind of what this presentation is going to be focusing on.”

Lambart and Dr. Katie Marshall of Southwest Vision Center, which has locations in Dowagiac, Edwardsburg, Three Rivers and Buchanan, visited the Dowagiac Rotary Club during its regular meeting to give a presentation about eye health. The presentation primarily focused on children’s eye health and screenings, but also briefly touched on adult eye health and eye insurance.

The bulk of Lambart’s presentation focused on how children need eye screenings from optometrists, because he believes optometrists’ screenings are more thorough than state screenings that children receive in school.

“A lot of kids can go through a state screening and pass, but have vision problems that prevent them from paying attention,” Lambart said. “Some kids will have an eye that sees close up and another that sees far away. Others will be running around the room because they can’t pay attention to what’s in front of them. … A state screening won’t catch those sorts of things.”

Lambart went on to say that vision problems can have severe learning consequences, as children cannot learn well or pay attention if they cannot see properly. According to research done by the Vision Therapy Center and The College of Optometrists in Vision Development, some children are misdiagnosed with ADHD, because vision problems can exhibit the same symptoms of ADHD.

“Imagine trying to learn, when the words on a page are jumping out at you or you can’t see a chalkboard,” he said.

Marshall added that children need regular screenings, because most will not ask for help if they are experiencing vision problems.

“A kid won’t tell you that they have vision problems because they don’t know any different, because that’s all they have ever seen. They don’t know they are having a problem,” she said. “I have had kids in my seat before say they weren’t having any issues, when they actually were.”

Lambart said he has been trying to get schools in the area to allow the Southwest Vision team to come and screen children in addition to state screenings they receive in school, but has been turned away. At the suggestion of a Rotarian, he said his next step will be considering going to local school board meetings to discuss the issue.

“This is very important to me,” he said. “Kids really need to see properly in order to learn properly.”