Wow, I can't believe it has been so long since I've blogged. February is now over, and the highlight of the month was our Give Kids a Smile (GKAS) event that took place last Friday, February 22. It took me a whole week to recover and get around to writing about it. GKAS is a national program aimed at helping serve children who might not otherwise have access to dental care as well as bringing publicity to the problem of access to dental care in lower socioeconomic populations.
It was our fourth time organizing a GKAS program, and I am always amazed at how hard it is to find patients and have them show up for the free care. Last year we had to cancel the event for lack of patients. The few we had signed up, we worked into our normal schedule the remainder of the month.
This year we made a strong effort to really shake the bushes and get the word out and find patients. We sent staff to screen in neighboring counties, we contacted private social agencies as well as schools and the health department. And we prescreened patients in our office so that we could spend more time providing care on the day of our event. It worked so well, we had to call in reinforcements two weeks prior, and again one week before the event.
A great thanks to Dr. Greg Archambault and Dr. Robert Rosenblum (two local General Dentists) for agreeing to come to our office and help us provide dentistry for some of the teenagers that showed up. We also pulled Dr. Bill Nipper, a local endodontist, to do a few root canals before the event for one special teenager so she would be ready to get her smile back on our GKAS event. She had previous root canals done on her front teeth which were half broken and failing, and she was building up her front teeth with over the counter denture relining material to try and keep some sort of a functional smile.
And there is no way we could have been successful without our great staff (Nesia, Keisha, Farah, Cindy, Linda, Katie, Trish, Sharon, Andi, and Elaina) who volunteered to work and some extras we pulled from around the community (Thank you so much Shelly, Debbie, Cherie, and Audrey).
This was by far the biggest event of this kind we have ever had. The final numbers showed we saw 57 patients on Friday the 22nd, and we screened an additional 15 that for some reason did not show up. The value of dental services that we provided on the 22nd of Feb was $26,262 !!!
That is an amazing amount of dentistry in such a short time. But more amazing were some of the children who came through and were so brave, so mature, and so sweet.
I am proud that we were able to organize the event to provide more than screenings. Often times, children will be screened on free days, but then there is nowhere to go to take care of the problems that are found (again, the access to care problem).
We found ways to get children out of pain, keep children out of pain, improve their function, improve their appearance, and coach them on ways to improve their oral health and avoid future cavities. All in all, it was a very good day. And most all the volunteers went home and took a two hour nap!!!!
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