BUFFALO, New York--More than 800 local school children visited the University at Buffalo School of Dental Medicine Feb. 3, 2012. to participate in the school’s 11th Annual Give Kids a Smile Day.
A video of the event is available at bit.ly/yb93wW.
Several hundred volunteers, including UB dental school faculty, staff, and students donated the day to provide dental care to the children, many of whom do not receive regular dental care.
The experience, says M. Dian ChinKit-Wells, DDS, clinical assistant professor in the UB Department of Pediatric and Community Dentistry, “changes their vision of dentistry overall.”
“There are balloons all over, everybody is all happy. It’s ‘give kids a smile day.’ Not ‘give kids dental treatment day.’”
Held as part of National Children’s Dental Health Month, the event is a partnership with the American Dental Association and the Eighth District Dental Society.
“It’s an access-to-care program,” ChinKit-Wells explained. “It’s for those children that do not have a dentist, do not have health insurance, do not have transportation. It’s a program to break that barrier down so that they can get free dental care.”
Seating crowns on implant abutments
UB dental students play a pivotal role, seeing pediatric patients and doing hands-on dentistry. More important, says ChinKit-Wells, “is that they see that a program as big as the University at Buffalo can shut down for a day and open up their doors for free treatment. We hope they will take this to their private practices when they graduate, that they will take this need to give back to the community so that everyone can be taken care of.”
Serving the children of western New York since 1917, UB’s Department of Pediatric and Community Dentistry is the “dentist” for more than 50,000 patients who access its services each year.
For more information, call (714) 645-6969 or visit buffalo.edu/news.
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