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Area Charity Doing its Part to Improve Florida’s Oral Healthcare
03/15/10 - 02:21 PM

Children’s Volunteer Health Network

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The Children’s Volunteer Health Network “Just for Grins” Mobile Dental Clinic is currently visiting the sixth scheduled elementary school for the year.  With only two left to go, the school year seems to have flown by for the staff, volunteers, and professionals that work about the Bus.

“Wow!  I can’t believe the year is almost over,” said Denise Johnston, Mobile Dental Clinic Manager and Hygienist.  “We will be seeing over 500 children between now and the end of the school year…that’s a lot of teeth,” Johnston went on to say.  The Mobile Dental Clinic provides preventative and restorative oral healthcare to children in grades K-3 in Walton County and is the moving part of CHVN’s mission to facilitate free access to healthcare for uninsured and underinsured kids in our community.

The MDC will be stationed at West Defuniak Elementary for the month of April, and will finish out at Freeport Elementary in May. In addition to the work the Mobile Dental Clinic does throughout Walton County, it also helps to improve the oral hygiene of children in Okaloosa County.

The Mobile Dental Clinic recently visited another children’s charity – Children in Crisis, located in Fort Walton Beach.  Alice Stapleton, Executive Director noted: “The organization is a long time friend of CVHN.  Children in Crisis aims to help kids that have been removed from their homes by providing emergency shelter and foster homes.

“These kids often have no access to a dentist, so we consider this a great partnership and opportunity to impact these kids by providing them with the oral healthcare they need.” For the second consecutive year, the Mobile Dental Clinic provided free preventative and restorative care to children at CIC, seeing a total of 16 youth.  Yet while CVHN is caring for a growing number of young people every year, the number of children in need of oral attention continues to rise.

“Our concern for the oral health of the children in our community is growing,” Stapleton continued.  “The state of Florida received a ‘F’ through a major study conducted by the Pew Center on the States.”  This study was an enormous effort on the part of Pew, DentaQuest, and the Kellog Foundation and concluded that Florida is challenged when it comes to making provisions for the oral health of its children.  According to the study, one in five children in the US has no access to dental healthcare.  “But that’s not the worst news,” Stapleton continued, “in Florida we fall below the already unacceptable national average.”

The report shows that less than 25% of our state’s children have access to dental services. “Something has to be done,” Stapleton stated. “What would you do if your child received an ‘F’ in her class at school?  You wouldn’t accept that as her best, would you?  We hope that the results of this study will make our citizens aware of the oral healthcare crisis in Florida and our own community.” The bad news is that the state of Florida isn’t performing in the area of oral healthcare, but the good news is that CVHN and supporters such as the Blue Foundation for a Healthy Florida are responding with urgency.  Stapleton concluded, “We knew all along that we would have our work cut out for us.  The Pew data simply told us how serious the problem really is.  The day all kids have access to the oral healthcare they need, we can go home, but until then, we need volunteers and donations to continue to do our work.  We refuse to fail.  We want to be ‘A’ students, and know that it is possible.”  To read the complete study conducted by the Pew Center on the States, visit www.pewcenteronthestates.org.