Dental program's 50th clinic is under way in Gloucester

Dentist Terry Dickinson briefly worried once that the Mission of Mercy free dental clinic he had organized wouldn't draw enough patients to keep the volunteer dentists and hygienists busy.

That was 11 years ago at the Virginia Dental Association Foundation's first big outreach clinic in Wise County.

Close to 40,000 dental patients later, the Mission of Mercy dental project marks a milestone this weekend. The program will hold its 50th outreach clinic today and Sunday in Gloucester.

"They come in with pain and infection, and they can leave free of that," said Dickinson, executive director of the Virginia Dental Association.

About 750 patients are expected during the clinic, which will be held at Gloucester High School. At a similar event last year, 501 people received dental care.

"We've had a lot of people who had numerous teeth taken out at one time," said dentist Charles Harris, whose practice is in Gloucester. "They are usually individuals who haven't been seen in 15, 20 years, and they've got some teeth broken off below the gum line."

Harris said 50 dentists, 25 hygienists and more than 80 faculty and students from the dental school at Virginia Commonwealth University are among the more than 500 volunteers helping with the two-day effort.

"For someone to act like dental health does not have to do with overall health is naïve," Dickinson said.

A 2008 federal health survey shows that most adult Virginians are able to get basic dental care. In the survey, 75.4 percent of adults responded that a dentist or dental hygienist had cleaned their teeth within the past year.

Income matters, however. Among those with annual income between $15,000 and $24,999, about half had received a cleaning, compared with 84 percent of those making $50,000 or more a year.

The Mission of Mercy projects target low-income, underserved populations. Many of the events are held in rural areas.

"I think it would surprise people to learn that almost half of Virginians have no dental insurance," said Deborah D. Oswalt, executive director of the Virginia Health Care Foundation, which has financially supported the dental project over the years.

"In many instances, dental care is treated by these uninsured Virginians as a commodity," Oswalt said. "So they have to make a decision about whether to go and get a cavity filled or get a toothache taken care of just like they have to make decisions about whether to get new tires for their car or to go buy groceries."

But Dickinson and Oswalt say the clinics are not a long-term solution to an access problem.

"Our goal is to work ourselves out of business," Dickinson said. "But I don't see that happening any time soon. We want communities to create sustainable answers to this access-to-care issue."

The Mission of Mercy project has been a catalyst in some communities that have started offering low-cost dental care on a regular basis. Dickinson named the Eastern Shore, Martinsville and Orange as among those communities.

Sustainability is also something Oswalt's foundation considers during grant-making. Often, funds taper over several years as grant recipients try to become self-supporting.

"We have 135 localities in Virginia. Today, only 74 of them have a community-based dental safety-net provider," Oswalt said. Her organization has supported about half of them.

"People might say, 'Why don't they just go to a local free clinic?' The truth is, not all health safety-net providers are dental safety-net providers," Oswalt said. "Even if they are, that 74 includes very small operations, open one day a week just to pull teeth. They are pain clinics, just for emergencies."

tlsmith@timesdispatch.com

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