Kyara Fortes hadn’t been to a dentist for about a year. So, when the 3-year-old and her mother stopped in to the offices of Brockton Area Multi-Services Inc. recently, she visited a tiny back office just big enough for a desk, a filing cabinet, and a collapsible dental chair.
“Do all your teeth feel good? Can you eat all the foods that you like?” dental hygienist Carol Gilmore of Halifax asked, and the bright-eyed girl in pink nodded. “Go, ‘Ahhhh.’ ”
Gilmore inspected Kyara’s teeth with a small disposable mirror — “It tickles!,” the girl said — before cleaning them and painting on a coat of fluoride, while Kyara clutched Flossy, the stuffed dinosaur with a set of plastic teeth that Gilmore uses to demonstrate good brushing.
Gilmore is a public health hygienist, one of the first licensed under a program created in 2010 to improve access to dental care among low-income children and adults by giving experienced hygienists more authority to deliver preventive care without direct supervision from a dentist.
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