COMMUNITY DENTAL CARE

If you’ve ever had a toothache, you remember the pain! When five-year-old Lydia came to our clinic she had been crying for two days. Her parents had taken her to the hospital and they had offered to pull the tooth after anesthetizing her—for a cost of $3,000! Her parents didn’t have insurance or the money to pay for it. One of our dentists was able to calm and reassure both Lydia and her parents and extracted the tooth for less than $100. Access to affordable quality dental care is a serious problem for low-income and minority adults, families and children here in the Twin Cities — especially for immigrants and refugees. Many new immigrants, especially of Karen (Burmese) descent, have lived for years in refugee camps without access to any dental services or dental supplies and many of their children have never seen a dentist. They don’t understand the correlation between poor oral health and poor physical health. Most have no idea that dental disease can impact a person’s self-image, wellbeing and achievement, can lead to stress and depression, and can cause serious behavior or attention problems.

When Drs. Vacharee and Andrew Peterson began their clinic in East St. Paul 29 years ago, they were one of the first private clinics in the Twin Cities that focused primarily on serving low-income and minority patients. To ensure continued access to high quality dental care for the large numbers of patients enrolled in public programs, the clinic was incorporated into a nonprofit in August 2004 and began serving patients as Community Dental Care in January 2005.

In May 2008, we opened our second clinic location in Maplewood. Besides offering general preventive and restorative dental services, our clinic provides two community programs, both started in 2006. The first provides oral health education and prevention services for children (age 0-5) and pregnant mothers. Last year we served over 1,550 children and pregnant mothers in-clinic and provided community presentations to over 2,550 low-income and minority parents and children. We also maintain a program that trains dental professional students. Our goal is to increase access for low-income and immigrant populations by training students to work successfully with these populations within a community clinic environment.

Last year we provided clinical training for 75 students at our two clinics. We are proud of our cultural diversity (78% of our staff are an ethnic minority) and our excellent, well-trained staff. Between the two clinics, which each have 16 operatories, we have an active patient base of about 27,000 people. Of these, 84% are on public programs; 80% are a minority with 60% of Asian descent (Hmong, Laotian or Karen/ Burmese); and 50% are children under age 18.

We have two locations:

828 Hawthorne Avenue East, St. Paul, MN (651-774-2959)

1670 Beam Avenue, Maplewood, MN (651-925-8400)

Website: www.cdentc.org