Sandra E. Wang-Harris
William Oxley Thompson Award
Doctor of Optometry, 1997
In less than a decade, Sandra E. Wang-Harris has completed a career’s worth of accomplishments that include a year-long stint organizing an optometry program in Nepal.
After graduating from the College of Optometry, Wang-Harris established the first eye clinic in Alabama exclusively for HIV-positive patients, where she donated time and equipment to provide primary eye care.
In 2000, Wang-Harris became a U.S. Army civil service staff optometrist and started examining active, retired, and dependent members of the military, as well as providing urgent and emergent eye care, supervising optometry students from the University of Alabama-Birmingham, and teaching enlisted personnel the duties of optometric technicians. In 2002, she received the Achievement Medal for Civilian Service from the Fox Army Health Center at the Redstone Arsenal in Alabama.
Wang-Harris took a leave of absence in 2002 to work in Nepal as an unpaid Senior Fellow of the World Council of Optometry. The South Asian country is one of the poorest and least-developed in the world, with an agriculturally based economy that cannot support its population of 26 million. The average Nepali earns less than a dollar a day.
While in Nepal, Wang-Harris organized and supervised new clinics; oversaw all aspects of optometric education at a local university; developed programs for future instruction; directed patient care with clinical instruction of optometry students; taught classes; and sought and coordinated donations worth thousands of dollars for indigent patient care and educational use. She detailed her experiences in the June 2004 issue of the Journal of Optometric Education.
Closer to home, Wang-Harris, who can conduct eye exams in four languages, is a member of the Huntsville Taiwanese Association and has offered seminars on eye health to Chinese-speaking members. She belongs to the North Alabama chapter of Families With Chinese Children (she and her husband, Kevin, recently adopted a daughter from China). Wang-Harris works with local Hispanic outreach ministries, where she provides eye exams and glasses to the uninsured. She is active in her church’s world mission ministry and as a choir member, flutist, and harpist. She also served as an officer in the local Lions Club and remains involved in fund-raising and spreading awareness of preventable blindness.
Wang-Harris is a member of the American Optometric Association, a Fellow of the American Academy of Optometry, and a volunteer with Volunteer Optometric Services to Humanity. She is a clinical examiner for the National Board of Examiners in Optometry. She has served on medical missions to Mexico and Central America, and worked with medical volunteers in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
Wang-Harris enrolled in Ohio State after earning her undergraduate degree in music from the University of Georgia. At Ohio State, she was treasurer of the Class of 1997 and of Epsilon Psi Epsilon, the student professional fraternity.
She currently is pursuing a master’s degree in public health. Wang-Harris and her family plan to relocate to Panama, where she will continue to work toward better access to eye care for the world’s impoverished populations.
