Photos by Liz Kirchner
Liz Kirchner
communitynews@ourvalley.org
“Look at my tooth!” shouts a first grader at Price’s Fork Elementary School as best he can with one hand stuffed in his mouth wiggling a very loose lower incisor.
“It got loose!” he says to his classmates lined up efficiently waiting their turn in the hall with the dentist.
Under crayon colorings of imaginary islands and signs that say “We can be creative,” “We can be dreamers!” at the door of Mrs. Price’s pre-kindergarten, in tiny, blue plastic chairs, Dr. Mansell, a dentist who volunteers with the Dental Aid NRV shines a pen-shaped flashlight into the mouth of the child in front of him who has opened his mouth real wide.
“Dakota!” Mansell said. “Thank you! That is some kinda [sic] big mouth! We’ve got an alligator here.”
To each he gives encouragements.
“Good job, man,” and “Okay, Preston, lookin’ good!”
“I’ve got a wiggly tooth,” says another little boy in a shirt that says, “My Dad Rocks.”
They talk about the tooth fairy and keeping our teeth clean and healthy.
“Have you noticed anything? Any problems you’ve seen?” the doctor asks a teacher. She says she’ll keep an eye out. “Everything looks fine,” he said.
Volunteer Lou Reynolds of Christiansburg sits beside the doctor with a clipboard noting whose teeth look good, who needs dental care pretty soon and who needs dental care right now.
Those aren’t just hollow instructions. Dental Aid NRV has built a relationship with the Community Health Centers in Christiansburg, Pulaski and Dublin whose doctors can see kids with cavities or other dental health problems right away at little cost.
“Our goal is to do screenings and use our partners to find kids a dental ‘home,’” Laura Jirsa, of Dental Aid NRV partner Community Health Center said.
She’s just back from three Giles County schools where they screened 627 kids.
Some kids don’t have a dental home, or a regular dentist. Some have never been seen by a dentist at all, even though the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry recommends a person should go to the dentist by the time they’re about a year old, or six months after their teeth begin to come in.
With her clipboard and quiet demeanor, Lou Reynolds, has been volunteering with the group for about four years after retiring as a Montgomery County Public School educator.
“I needed things to do. Margot’s my neighbor, and had a need I thought I can help her and myself at the same time,” she said.
She’s a calm presence comfortable around children and they around her. Everything is going smoothly, but one little girl in pink boots is crouching against the wall as the other children filed by, just watching for a while. She doesn’t want to sit in the little blue plastic chair, she tells Reynolds.
“That’s okay,” Reynolds said.
When she was ready, the little girl stood up in the middle of the hall and the doctor stood up and she opened her mouth and the doctor looked in and said, “That looks great,” and she trotted away.
In the New River Valley, 25 percent of adults over 60 have lost all their teeth.
And it starts early. Tooth decay remains the most common chronic disease in children between five and 17 years old—four times more common than asthma.
Rural children are less likely to have insurance and receive dental health care than urban children.
Down the hall, Margot Thompson, co-founder of Dental Aid NRV, with her husband, Joe Thompson, has organized the event: the volunteers, the dentists, the relationship with the Community Health Center and schools throughout the NRV.
This morning, she’s organized two volunteer dentists, and support volunteers teaming them to screen 450 children in pre-kindergarten to fifth grades classes at Price’s Fork. The teams will visit elementary schools in Blacksburg the following week.
The daughter of a dentist, Margot Thompson had volunteered with the NRV Free Clinic (now the Community Health Center of the NRV) for decades, witnessing the consequences of unequal access to dental care, and a lack of dental education, and a culture simply resigned to poor dental health.
At the clinic, Thompson’s job was to collect co-pay from people coming for dental care recalls her husband in an earlier interview.
“Margot saw people and saw their faces and knew their stories and the 3-4 months it took waiting to be seen by a doctor,” he said. “There were so many coins: dimes and nickels and pennies. It dawned on us that, to make co-pay was so hard – people were looking in drawers and piggy banks to come up with 5 dollars to pay for the doctor.”
Together, Joe and Margot Thompson, owners of Thompson Tires, set out to address the problem of inadequate and inconsistent dental health resources in the NRV.
They founded Dental Aid Partners of the New River Valley in 2009, becoming Dental Aid NRV in 2017.
The organization’s mission is to facilitate dental and oral health through early education, delivering care to citizens who struggle to afford it, emphasizing childhood education and a culture of dental health that may stay with the kids throughout their lives and trickle up to their parents.
Through these screenings and in school, kids learn proper dental hygiene, receive free toothbrushes, toothpaste and dental floss.
Volunteer dentists find early education is a good approach, but it’s the parent’s responsibility after that.
“I think it’s very effective,” said Dr. Young, who’s been volunteering with the group for about four years. “I think it’s very effective. But do they get the follow-up? Dental Aid NRV tries to make sure they get the follow-up, but opting out is a problem.”
Harnessing the doctors and equipment of the Community Health Center, the organization tries to address what is seen as a severe shortage of local, affordable, or low-cost oral health services.
For more information about Dental Aid NRV visit www.nrvsmiles.org/ and the Community Health Center, which serves people with and without insurance, visit www.chcnrv.org or call 381-0820.
