Traveling team fights tooth loss, infection

Feature Correspondent

SANDPOINT — The little boy climbed into the chair and looked cautiously at the purple-smocked ladies on either side of him. He was sitting in a temporary dental center set up in a back office at Farmin Stidwell Elementary School, where more than 100 students had received exams and free dental sealants by the end of last week.

There was some confusion on the youngster’s part when one of the dental professionals began to chat with him about oral hygiene. It wasn’t that the words were too big; it was just that some of the information was very different from what he had learned at home. For example, after the ladies gave him a toothbrush and a sticker, they told him about the importance of brushing his teeth at least twice a day.

He heard the part about brushing twice and assured them he was on the right track. Yep, he said. At my house, we always brush twice a week.

“We’ve had kids tell us they brush on Mondays and Fridays,” said Gail Smith, a clinic aide with the Delta Dental Mobile Sealing Clinic that wrapped up its work in North Idaho this past Thursday. “It’s quite surprising, actually, how little they know about proper dental care. A lot of kids only brush once-a-day and we see kids from families where everybody shares the same toothbrush.”

Boise-based Delta Dental of Idaho piloted its mobile clinic in southern Idaho in 2007. Since then, the program has provided free dental sealants, oral exams and instruction on proper brushing and flossing for more than 4,000 students from lower-income families in 26 school districts across the state. The clinics are offered in schools where more than 55 percent of the student population is enrolled in the free or reduced lunch program.

Along with Farmin Stidwell, the dental team worked with students from Hope and Kootenai Elementary, as well as Lake Pend Oreille Alternative High School during its two weeks in Bonner County.

“Most of the time we’re working in Boise, where there are a lot of schools,” said Samantha Kenney, the team’s registered dental hygienist. “We travel up north in October and April of every year.”

As part of its recent North Idaho swing, the team also visited schools in Bonners Ferry, Oldtown, Priest Lake and Priest River, along with several Kootenai County locations.

Over the past year, the mobile clinic has provided sealants and dental care instruction for nearly 500 students in the three northern counties. Of those, more than 50 percent had suspected decay in one or more of their molars and close to 10 percent had never been to a dentist before.

“We see seventh and eighth graders who have never been to a dentist,” Kenney said, adding that the sealant program is designed for children in second, third, seventh and eighth grades — the ages when permanent molars come in.

Although the clinic was primarily designed to administer sealants — a treatment used by dentists as a preventive measure to decrease cavities in molars — the team has become an active force in raising children’s awareness about dental care and catching tooth problems as early as possible.

“It’s shocking, the state of oral health for some of these kids,” said Lisa Reed, community outreach manager for Delta Dental. “When we started this program, we thought that we were going to prevent cavities and we’re doing that.

“But we’re also finding children who are seriously in need of dental care — kids who are in a lot of pain — and we’re helping them,” she added. “Some of the problems have gone on for so long that, when they finally do see a dentist, it requires major reconstruction.”

In the Bonner, Boundary and Kootenai County schools that were visited last month, 8 percent of the children treated had active infections or major tooth loss requiring immediate care.

“When that happens, we turn the records over to the school nurse so that they can get them the help they need,” Reed said.

The free sealant program is funded through interest earned on a reserve fund that Delta Dental — a dental benefit carrier that provides coverage to Idaho employers with three or more workers — keeps in place to pay possible future claims. The company formed its philanthropic arm, Delta Dental Community Outreach, to use that money to serve lower-income schools in Idaho where families could not otherwise afford dental care.

“This program is truly touching every one of those kids when they crawl up into the chair,” Reed said. “Eighty percent of cavities are found in children from families in the lowest 20 percent of the income bracket. We’re passionate about being able to change that statistic.”

The Delta Dental Mobile Sealing Clinic will again visit North Idaho after the start of next school year. Parents and caregivers of students in schools that meet the lower-income criteria are informed ahead of time about the availability of free sealants.