News Articles
$75,000 from Delta Dental
Used in Preventive Care
For two consecutive years, the Delta
Dental Foundation has awarded $75,000 to Indiana University School of Dentistry
to assist in the preventive dental care of Hoosier children at greatest risk of
developing dental decay and other problems that place a youngster’s oral health
in jeopardy.
The grant was awarded in 2008 to Seal
Indiana, a statewide mobile dental sealant program created by the dental school
to identify, and provide preventive care to, impoverished children whose
families are unable to pay for dental care in their communities. The funds are
being used to further expand the school’s outreach efforts in the state,
covering the total cost of dental examinations, protective dental sealants, and
fluoride treatments for additional children enrolled in Indiana’s Title 1
(lowest income) schools.
The foundation is the philanthropic arm
of Delta Dental, one of the country’s major providers of dental health service
plans.
“We are very grateful to the Delta Dental
Foundation for enabling Seal Indiana to provide preventive dental services to
children from low-income families at no cost to their parents,” said Dr. Karen Yoder,
director of the dental school’s Community Dentistry program and Seal Indiana.
“These children are the most vulnerable to dental problems.”
The dental school’s Seal Indiana program,
a collaborative venture with the Indiana State Department of Health, was
launched in 2003 with a two-pronged primary goal of working with the community
at large to help reduce dental disease in vulnerable populations while also
providing invaluable service-learning opportunities for the school’s students.
IU dental students in their fourth year
of study complete a three-day rotation with Seal Indiana under the mentorship
of faculty who travel with the students throughout the state, and dental
hygiene students volunteer their services at treatment sites and special
community events. “In pre-rotation assignments, we familiarize the students
with the specific communities they will be serving and get them thinking about
issues related to disparities in access to care,” Yoder said. “They also learn
about how health policies are developed, and the role they can play in that
important process.”
In its first five years, Seal Indiana
students and faculty examined more than 16,000 children at more than 700 sites,
including Title 1 schools, community health centers, Head Start programs,
homeless shelters, and programs for families of migrant farm workers.
The Delta Dental Foundation grant will go
far in helping Seal Indiana care for the estimated 45 percent of children at
the Title 1 schools who are not enrolled in Medicaid and whose parents cannot
afford fees even when they are presented on a sliding scale, said Yoder. School
nurses and community health center staff are helping to identify participants,
and Seal Indiana works with treatment site personnel to increase awareness of
the program among eligible families.
This is the fourth grant that the Delta
Dental Foundation has awarded to the IU School of Dentistry in the past two
years, for a total of $160,000.
Article reprint courtesy of Indiana University School of Dentistry Alumni Bulletin, Vol. 21. No. 2, 2009