Jones Eye Institute - Funding Needs - UAMS - University of Arkansas Medical Sciences

Jones Eye Institute

The Jones Eye Institute, a Center of Excellence on the UAMS campus, was founded in 1994 with a dedication to patient care, education and research. Today, we are looking forward to the next decade of excellence in serving the state of Arkansas through teaching, healing, searching and serving.

The Department of Ophthalmology, which is part of the College of Medicine at UAMS, along with the Pat & Willard Walker Eye Research Center, a state-of-the-art clinic and other educational programs are located within the 100,000 square-foot facility.

Arkansas ranks third in the nation in new cases of blindness each year, so the Harvey & Bernice Jones Eye Institute's main mission is to prevent blindness in Arkansas. Patients come to the Jones Eye Institute from every county in our state and even from surrounding states and other countries.

Our faculty represents every ophthalmic subspecialty, and our patients can enjoy a multitude of services ranging from our unique optical shop to our LASIK surgery program. The Jones Eye Institute also educates doctors and technicians to become skilled ophthalmic practitioners through the residency program and the Ophthalmic Medical Technology (OMT) program. The Pat & Willard Walker Eye Research Center is involved in sight-saving research, particularly regarding viruses of the eye.

Looking Into the Future of Eye Disease
The fear of blindness is by far the most feared disability in the world. The International Diabetes Federation found in a survey that “adult diabetics fear blindness or vision loss more than they fear early death.”

In 2006 the first of the baby boomers turned 60 years old. The National Census Bureau predicted that the number of people 55+ will increase from 55 million in 2000 to 77 million in 2010, and by 2020 the total is expected to reach 98 million. In other words our 55+ population will double.

Over 90 percent of serious eye diseases in adults occur in the 55+ age group. That means by 2020 there will be twice as many adults with potentially blinding eye disease unless there are some significant discoveries to prevent them. Without major discoveries the Jones Eye Institute physicians can expect to have at least 120,000 patient visits a year by 2020.

How will Jones Eye Institute cope with this phenomenal growth of patients? It can be done by expanding our facilities and recruiting more physicians and by increasing our efforts to find ways through innovative research to prevent conditions that lead to blindness.

How You Can Help
At the Jones Eye Institute, we believe “that it is every person’s dream to make a difference” and that we are all waiting to find a cause to which we can become passionate. Helping to prevent the loss of sight is our passion. Won't you make it yours as well?

Your generosity, your strength and your devotion have the unique power to make that future a viable alternative the present. Your donations can help establish this type of stable funding for Jones Eye Institute — making certain that the eye care needs of our community will always be met. Donations can be made online or downloading the gift form. The donation form can be used for check or credit card gifts as well as UAMS employee payroll deductions.

UAMS is currently involved in a comprehensive campaign to ensure a healthier future for Arkansans. A significant portion of Campaign Imagine, which has a goal of $325 million, will be designated to fund critical initiatives within the Jones Eye Institute.

Funding Opportunities
Your gifts can make a difference in helping to prevent blindness by donating to these specific areas.

Endowed Chairs
The future needs of the Jones Eye Institute center around people, programs and endowments. We want to attract and retain the best and the brightest ophthalmologists the country has to offer. They will be the key to accomplishing our mission, fulfilling our vision, and maintaining our values. Establishing endowed chairs will help meet this goal.

A named endowed chair is a high honor for the donor and the highest honor the University can bestow on a faculty member. To the chair holder, appointment to an endowed chair signals recognition to colleagues and to the world beyond academia both personal achievements and of the institution’s commitment to their fields of inquiry and teaching. It enables them to secure the recognition, and financial support, they so richly deserve.

To the donor, endowed chairs serves as a living memorial by linking their names, or one they honor, in perpetuity to the succession of scholars whose works their gifts support. Gifts for endowed chairs offer the promise of enduring impact.

The ultimate beneficiaries are the students, patients, and the community served through these investments in our future.

Residency Training Program
Teaching continues to be a top priority for the Jones Eye Institute. We have direct responsibility for the Ophthalmology Residency Training Program and the Ophthalmic Medical Technology Program, and we are a participant in the medical education of medical students and some interns. The ophthalmology residents get clinical and surgical experience that is greater than almost any other program in the United States. The amount of surgery performed by our residents is greater than the 90 percentile when compared to other programs. In addition to their clinical experience, the residents have a structured program of lectures and discussion of journal articles pertaining to patients they evaluate.

Nalini and Puran Bora conduct macular degeneration research

Drs. Nalini and Puran Bora conduct research into age-related macular degeneration.

Research
The Pat and Willard Walker Eye Research Center is dedicated to providing a state-of-the-art eye research program of the highest quality for Arkansas and the nation. Its mission is to prevent vision loss and blindness through the performance of basic and clinical research whose goal is to improve the understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of a variety of important sight-threatening diseases of the eye.

We are looking to create an Arkansas Retinal Disorders and Ophthalmic Genetics Clinic that would include comprehensive eye care for patients who have retinal disorders such as diabetic retinopathy, age related macular degeneration and retinal pigmentosa; diagnostic evaluations with state-of-the-art imaging; genetics management incorporating mutational analysis and family counseling; and therapeutic strategies including intraocular injections and medical and laser therapies.

Contact Us
To learn more about these and other funding opportunities in the Jones Eye Institute, please contact the following member of our development team.

Shannon Hughen-Giger, Director of Development
(501) 686-8638 or shgiger@uams.edu