GRANTEE IN THE NEWS
From the Canon City Daily Record: Making Smiles Brighter
SmileMakers provide care for underserved children
Karen Lungu
The Daily Record
A few brighter smiles are flashing around Cañon City as the Colorado SmileMakers Mobile Dental Unit winds up a week of serving pediatric patients throughout Fremont County.
Dr. James Jack, along with dental students from the University of Colorado Denver School of Dental Medicine, worked from a mobile unit parked in the Fremont County Public Health and DHS parking lot, offering uninsured and underinsured residents an opportunity for dental screenings and care.
“This started with the Child Health and Safety Fair we had in May,” said Fremont County Public Health nurse Linda Uhland.
CU School of Dental Medicine students spent a day at the health and safety fair, Uhland said, offering screenings to over 100 local children. An El Pomar Foundation grant of around $10,000 enabled funding for the weeklong mobile dental clinic.
Uhland spent countless hours since the health and safety fair, following up the screenings with appointments with the SmileMakers Mobile Dental Unit. The brightly painted Colorado SmileMakers van, which has traveled Grand, Eagle and Yuma Counties the past four years, expanded its program to Fremont County this summer. The unit enables advanced dental students the opportunity to provide pediatric dentistry to many of Colorado’s younger residents, often setting up shop for two to four weeks at a time.
“We service underserved and uninsured populations, mostly in rural areas of Colorado,” said Dr. Jack, an associate professor for the CU School of Dental Medicine and Director of Colorado SmileMakers.The three fully equipped dental chairs in the van provide the doctor and students the capabilities to provide a full range of services to several children at a time.
“Our patients are all pediatric dental patients,” he said, “so they’re from the age of two to 18 or 19. We usually try to partner with and get funding through the counties, but because of the state of the economy, it seems like the funding for everything has been cut, including our state funding for higher education. It’s making it difficult for us to fulfill our mission. We’re all trying to brainstorm to figure out ways to keep this program alive. We really feel like it serves a need.”
The mobile clinic also treats Medicaid and CHP Plus patients.
“We typically take three or four students to each location,” Dr. Jack said. “We have two programs at the dental school. One is an international program and one is the traditional dental program. Sometimes we have the ISP students and sometimes we have the fourth-year dental students, but it’s part of their advanced clinical training program. It gives them some valuable experience treating pediatric patients.”
Uhland spent the last few months filling every available appointment for the students and doctor, as well as follow-up care.
“Last week, we were just plum full,” Uhland said. “One day we saw 22 children. Another day was 18. And they keep coming back for further treatment. They’ve been doing root canals, pulling teeth, fillings.”
Some of the patients seen by Dr. Jack and his students in the mobile clinic have received vouchers for follow-up care at Orchard Springs Dental.
“We started on July 26,” Uhland said. “They were supposed to go home on the fourth of Aug., but Dr. Jack pulled a few strings and got some students to come back and volunteer some more time, through the fifth of August. They love Cañon City so they really hope they get to come back here.”
