Free dental clinic serves uninsured kids

The hustle and bustle common in the activity areas at The Salvation Army’s Ray & Joan Kroc Corps Community Center during after-school hours is also typical in another area of the big facility.

Parents and their children crammed into a small waiting room and spilled out to chairs in the hallway outside the entrance to the oral health clinic in the late afternoon Tuesday. The popular site is one of two dental clinics in Green Bay operated by the Brown County Oral Health Partnership to provide dental care for children who are not covered by dental insurance.

“We’re filled every day, all of the time,” said Carrie Stempski, executive director of the nonprofit called OHP.

More than 15,000 kids have received much-needed dental care and other health-care services in 10 years, since what started as a “Healthy Teeth, Healthy Kids” initiative in the Green Bay schools blossomed into the OHP.

Just last year alone, the agency served about 7,300 young patients, out of which nearly a third were newly treated. OHP leaders say those services in 2014 would have added up to nearly $6 million had the children been seen by a private practitioner.

Instead, thanks to substantial funding from local donors, as well as state and federal grants, the OHP offers a gamut of services — from cleanings to fillings to tooth extractions — without any out-of-pocket cost to the patient's family. The agency also has a dental clinic in downtown Green Bay at the Howe Community Resource Center.

OHP services are available for kids as young as babies through high school age. To receive treatment, patients must:

» Be a resident of Brown County.

» Not have private dental insurance or belong to a private dental practice.

» Be covered through a medical-assistance program or, if uninsured, qualify for the free-and-reduced lunch program at school.

» Participate in the OHP’s six-month recall program.

Holly Gering, a single mother from De Pere, has been getting dental care for her two teenage sons through the OHP for about seven years. Her oldest boy Nicholas, 19, who has cerebral palsy, had a follow-up exam at the Kroc Center clinic Tuesday after having a wisdom tooth pulled earlier in the summer.

“This is a godsend, especially for the kids with disabilities,” Gering said.

The agency’s paid staff includes nine dentists, many of whom have their own practices and help the OHP on a part-time basis.

“It’s very gratifying, just to know you were able to, number one, get (the kids) out of pain,” said Brian Hodgson, a pediatric dentist of 20-plus years from Milwaukee who works at an OHP clinic one day a week.

With the school year underway, the OHP plans to take its mobile dental clinic to local schools later this month to further reach kids who have been found to be in desperate need of dental care and oral health education.

The school-based program includes a distribution of toothbrushes and toothpaste to at-risk students and their families.

“We discovered that many of the children had no idea what a toothbrush was,” said Mary Kay Orr, a founding board member with the OHP. “I remembered being at one of the first clinics (at a school), and (students) thought it was a paintbrush. They had no idea what the toothbrush was.”

Orr also is the president-elect for the Rotary Club of Green Bay. The Green Bay club created the “Healthy Teeth, Healthy Kids” initiative in 2005 in commemoration of Rotary International’s 100-year anniversary. The program established the mobile dental clinic to serve city schools. It became the OHP with the creation of the fixed-site clinics in 2007.

The OHP also has partnered with St. Mary’s and St. Vincent hospitals to provide services for children who require special health care, such as oral treatment for cancer patients before they can receive chemotherapy.

“We had no idea the level of need that was out there until we started the program,” Orr said.

The local Rotary has contributed about $500,000 to OHP, including $171,000 last year.

The OHP last week honored the Rotary with a plaque in its honor outside the Kroc Center dental clinic.

“‘Healthy Teeth, Healthy Kids,’ that saying means so much more to me than it did 10 years ago,” said Stempski, who has led the OHP since its start. “At first, I thought it was a cute saying, that we would get kids healthy. But, today, it means so much more. We’ve helped thousands and thousands of children. We give hope where there was despair."

Source: http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/story/news/2015/09/09/free-dental-clinic-serves-uninsured-kids/71909802/

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