64MD, 70R

Throughout his career, William Scott, MD, has epitomized service: to his country; the subspecialty of pediatric ophthalmology; hundreds of medical students and resident and fellow physicians he trained and mentored; and hundreds of thousands of young patients across Iowa he treated. He helped establish Iowa KidSight, a statewide vision screening program for children. Even after retiring from the University of Iowa Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences in 2002, Scott returned to the department for several years to see patients in clinic when colleagues were away on medical or maternity leaves — a testament to his commitment and care.

Born and raised in Iowa City, Scott earned a bachelor’s degree at Iowa as a student-athlete, playing on the men’s basketball team his freshman year and the Rose Bowl-winning Hawkeye football teams of 1957 and 1959. He received a master’s degree as a medical student, splitting his second year of med school between his MD studies and a teaching position and graduate-level coursework in physiology.

In 1965, following an internship at Wayne State General Hospital in Detroit and the start of residency training at the UI, Scott was drafted into the U.S. Navy at the outset of the Vietnam War. He spent two years as a naval medical officer before resuming his residency at Iowa.

“As I finished my residency, the department’s chairman asked me if I’d be interested in strabismus, or eye misalignment, so I began fellowship training,” Scott says, “I was trained by the two top people in the field — one on the East Coast and one on the West. It was ideal for me.”

As a faculty member at Iowa, Scott established himself as a clinician, surgeon, teacher, and mentor. In the 1980s, he led the first multi-institutional clinical trial on strabismus. Known as the prism adaptation test, this measured the maximum angle of a patient’s eye misalignment, which allowed for more precise muscle eye surgery and significantly lowered the risk of under-correction and the need for follow-up surgery.

“This really changed the game for strabismus surgery,” Scott says, “and brought together pediatric ophthalmologists from across the country.”

The American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus, of which Scott was a founding member, is the premier medical organization dedicated to eye care for children.

In the 1990s, Scott helped test and validate a camera that could detect vision problems in children. This led him to establish Iowa KidSight (originally known as Coming to Your Senses) in 2000, a partnership with the Lions Club of Iowa that’s become a model for other preschool vision screening programs across the country. Lions Club volunteers visit daycares and preschools around the state and perform the free screenings using the specialized cameras. The images are interpreted by UI ophthalmology specialists, who contact a child’s family if vision problems are detected.  

Since its founding, Iowa KidSight has screened nearly 840,000 children, with over 48,500 kids requiring referral for follow-up care.

“It’s a program that took off and has just kept growing,” says Scott, who still serves as the program’s medical director. “The Iowa Lions have been unbelievable partners and supporters.”