Doctor Barry Cook, Optometric Physician, and his wife Julee are going on their 20th Volunteer Optometric Service to Humanity Mercy Mission to Ghana, Africa this October. The couple will be joining two other doctors and family members on this trip and will be providing eye care to the impoverished people during a six-day clinic, giving the gift of sight at no cost to them.
The facility for the clinic will be at an LDS meeting house. They will also work, as it is possible, with local African doctors to provide the needed treatments for blindness prevention. The Cooks have been preparing eye wear and medications for several months with the generous help of local boy scouts who have completed their Eagle Scout Service Projects by donating time and collecting glasses. The group will be doing eye examinations and matching up donated eye wear as closely as possible to the patient’s needs.
The Cooks would like to say thank you to the Utah State Lions Foundation for their assistance with travel expenses for the group to participate in this very large service project. They would also like to recognize the citizens of Carbon and Emery counties for donated their old eye wear to Dr. Cook’s office and the Boy Scouts that gave their time to help out.
Dr. Barry Cook was recently recognized and awarded by the American Optometric Association (AOA) along with 95 other optometric physicians throughout the United States. He was presented with the 2015 Continuing Optometric Recognition Award.
The award is presented to doctors of optometry who have completed 50 credit hours of continuing education in their field over a one-year period and, in addition, have previously received the Initial Optometric Recognition Award. More than 1,750 of the nation’s 40,000 practicing Optometric Physicians have earned the initial award They must have completed 150 hours of continuing education in their field over a consecutive three-year period.