400 kids get free dental care during ‘Give Kids A Smile’ event

SALT LAKE CITY — Kids filed out of the University of Utah School of Dentistry Saturday, clutching stuffed animals, with tears in their eyes and swollen cheeks, as part of the school’s annual “Give Kids A Smile” event, where dentists from all over the Wasatch Front provide dental care to families under the poverty line, free of charge.

It may not be a child’s favorite day, but the event is “part of something really big,” said Dr. LaRisse Skene, a Utah Dental Association board member.

As a co-organizer of the event, Skene has spent all year recruiting dentists from Holladay to North Salt Lake, and Tooele to Sandy, convincing them to give up a Saturday and provide dental care for kids 17 and under. “It used to be just 20 chairs,” she says, but after years of building up the event, and with help from generous donors, the program now has 80 dentists and specialists, along with 20 hygienists and hundreds of community volunteers to give around 400 kids the opportunity to receive the care they need.

Dr. James Williamson said the Utah event is unique.

Across the country, Give Kids A Smile hosts events where kids can get teeth cleanings and are screened for issues to be addressed by dentists on return visits. “We are doing wisdom teeth extractions. We are doing root canals. We are doing ortho. We are doing perio. We do dentistry — real hard-core dentistry,” Williamson said.

Specialists who do root canal procedures and other oral surgeries, as well as pediatrics, are available and ready to operate. If any dentist needs to finish work at a return visit, they give the family a voucher for continued free care at their offices.

“These are people that can’t afford dentistry in any way,” says Williamson. “We are doing hundreds of thousands of dollars in free dentistry today, all donated. Not one dime goes into anybody’s pockets. This is 100% going to the patient — total charity — nothing in return, no self-serving at all. And it always has been that way.”

He says, a few years ago, the event became “victims of their own success,” as the children who returned year after year required less and less serious intervention. In the last couple years, however, an influx of migrants and refugees in Utah has renewed the demand for medical care.

Patients were recruited by three organizations, including 200 children from the local refugee population brought in by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Wasatch Front Service Mission. The Midvale Community Building Community organization identified many families in Salt Lake’s Hispanic population with significant care needs, and the state of Utah’s Health Access Project performed outreach and screening for many families as well.

Dentistry students at the U. and hygiene students from across the valley helped doctors with private practices and those who work in hospitals around the region. Volunteers from the community buddied up with the children, taking them to various stations, helping them pick out stuffed animals donated by local Latter-day Saint wards; and helping educate families about oral health and mouth maintenance.

Henry Schein, a Utah-based dental supply distributor, donated all the materials used Saturday, from composites to fillings and everything in between.

“You cannot separate out the mouth from the rest of the body’s care,” Williamson said. “It’s all tied together, it’s a community effort.”