Rice Regional Dental Clinic (RRDC) at Rice Memorial Hospital, 301 Becker Ave. SW, Willmar, will join with thousands of dental professionals nationwide to provide free dental services to underserved children for the American Dental Association’s (ADA) 17th Annual Give Kids a Smile day.
The clinic is currently reserving spaces for appointments from 1-4 p.m. for the event Feb. 1. Rice Regional Dental Clinic, along with local volunteers, will serve children who are not already patients at the clinic. This event provides free dental services to children whose families face barriers to dental care.
Services include free oral screenings by a local volunteer dentist, cleanings, fluoride varnishes, sealants, extractions, oral hygiene instruction and family dental education. Qualifying individuals (low income children ages 0-17 who are not currently patients at another dental office) should call Rice Regional Dental Clinic at 320-214-2620.
This is the ninth year that Rice Regional Dental Clinic will participate in the American Dental Association’s Give Kids a Smile event. In 2018, nine local volunteers, including local dentists, hygienists, assistants, students from the University of Minnesota, office personnel and area public health nurses, helped to make the one-day event happen. Community business support is also an integral part of the event to provide services to kids who may have never or rarely visited the dentist.
Last year, volunteers at Rice Regional Dental Clinic treated 65 children and provided 325 procedures valued at $22,653. Many were teenagers who had never been to a dentist before. The volunteers also met with parents, instructing them on proper oral hygiene, healthy dietary choices, benefits of fluoridated water for their children’s teeth and need for regular dental check-ups.
“We want to help families experience a caring dental visit and learn about the connection of oral health to overall health,” said Director of Rice Regional Dental Clinic Linda Jackson. “Prevention of early cavities and oral disease will produce positive outcomes for life.”
According to the ADA, more than 181 million Americans will not visit a dentist this year even though nearly half of people over 30 suffer from some form of gum disease. Nearly one in four children under 5 years old has cavities, and approximately a quarter of the children in the U.S. do not have dental insurance, either private or public.
Give Kids A Smile is held annually and helps raise awareness of the epidemic of untreated dental disease, occurring both locally and nationally.
The event helps to create local public and private partnerships to increase access to oral health care. Through the volunteers, parents can learn the importance of establishing a primary dentist for their child within six months of their first tooth.
For more information, contact Linda Jackson at 320.214.2616 or by email at linda.jackson@carrishealth.com.
About Rice Regional Dental Clinic
Rice Regional Dental Clinic is located on the campus of Rice Memorial Hospital in Willmar. It opened in December 2007, and serves patients from a 17-county area in West Central and Southwest Minnesota. RRDC is the result of a major collaborative effort between Rice Memorial Hospital and the University of Minnesota School of Dentistry in the Twin Cities.
For more information about the University of Minnesota’s Outreach Division at the School of Dentistry visit dentistry.umn.edu/outreach/index.htm
About Give Kids a Smile
The American Dental Association started the Give Kids A Smile program in 2003 as a way for dentists to join with others in the community to provide dental services to underserved children. Dentists and other team members volunteer their time and services to provide screenings, treatments and education to children throughout the United States. Each year, approximately 400,000 children benefit from hundreds of events through the efforts of more than 40,000 annual volunteers.
For more information about Give Kids A Smile events, visit adafoundation.org/en/give-kids-a-smile. To learn more about proposed solutions to the dental crisis, mndental.org/ and http://www.ada.org.
