Near the end of September, the UNMC College of Dentistry will be one of several entities taking part in the Nebraska Veterans Mission of Mercy dental clinic in Yutan, Nebraska.
The 2025 VETMOM event will take place in the Army National Guard Titan Readiness Center at Camp Mead, and college faculty and students will provide comprehensive dental care to Nebraska veterans and their spouses.
Services will include exams, X-rays, cleanings, fillings, root canals, extractions and limited denture cases.
Jim Jenkins, DDS, professor in the UNMC Department of Adult Restorative Dentistry, has been serving as the clinical director for this event since it began in 2023. The event is managed by the Nebraska Department of Veterans Affairs and coordinated through the Nebraska DHHS Office of Oral Health. It receives financial support from the Nebraska Dental Foundation. Dentists and volunteers from across the state, including both the UNMC College of Dentistry and the Creighton School of Dentistry, will come together for the three-day event, which will serve more than 300 patients.
Eligible Veterans can register through the VA here, and volunteers can sign up here.
“Many of our dental students, faculty and staff participate in this event, and we get a nice turnout,” Dr. Jenkins said. “It’s a wonderful service for our veterans in need.”
“Senior dental students will get first dibs on the chairs,” Dr. Jenkins said. “The nice thing is, if the chairs are all staffed, there’s plenty of other jobs to do — sterilization, radiology, triage and prosthetics.”
Greg Bennett, DMD, chair of the UNMC Department of Adult Restorative Dentistry, has a team that scans the arches of people who need dentures, which are typically completed overnight, Dr. Jenkins said. Local dental lab Dental Designs provides all of the dental prostheses for the event.
Dentists and dental hygienists from across the state attend. Jaimee Shropshire, assistant professor in the UNMC Department of Dental Hygiene, generally takes 10 to 15 students to the event.
Already, 11 dental hygiene students have signed up this year, and Shropshire expects that number to rise, with three or four faculty members joining as well.
“We take the senior dental hygiene students,” she said. “However, if new, incoming dental hygiene students want to participate, there are several other roles in which they can volunteer.”
Shropshire said the opportunity to help veterans is a big draw for her students.
“This is one of our favorite events of the year,” she said. “You’re doing something for a population that really needs it. Students have told me it’s almost like they leave as a different person that day, because they’ve touched so many lives.”
Dr. Jenkins agreed: “They do an amazing job.”
Patients are referred to the UNMC and Creighton dental schools, Lincoln’s Clinic with a Heart, People’s City Mission or FQHCs for follow-up work, he added. “We don’t want it to be just a Band-Aid and ‘See you later.’”
Shropshire, who is married to a veteran, acknowledges teams may be unable to complete all the work every clinic attendee needs. “You just have to get as much done as you can, especially on those patients who haven’t been in for a long time,” she said. “That’s the hardest part, not being able to accomplish everything.”
Dental care is not always a veteran benefit. And Nebraska veterans have ranked dental care as their top health concern, according to Charles F. Craft, DDS, director of the DHHS Office of Oral Health. He spoke to many state veteran’s group leaders before the VETMOMs were first organized.
“It was clear something needed to be done to increase veteran access to dental care, and Nebraska had the resources to do it!” Dr. Craft said.
With buy-in from both dental schools, the Nebraska Dental and Hygiene Associations, the VA, the National Guard and several dental companies, the first event was held in 2023.
“Everybody is really behind this event,” Dr. Craft said. “In 2024, we were able to treat 400 patients and provided 2,700 services that had a value of $650,000. We expect to be bigger and help even more folks this year.
With about 400 total dental volunteers for the clinic, Dr. Jenkins estimates UNMC brings an average of 50 to 60 volunteers to each event.
“It’s a great turnout, not only from the college, but from throughout the state,” he said.
Shropshire said the college’s commitment to outreach work – from the longtime Children’s Dental Days to the new VETSmile Clinics – are a point of pride for both faculty and students.
“It’s about serving people,” she said. “I want our students to come away from events like this knowing that your job is to serve people and to help them, especially in times of need.”
“The Nebraska Department of Veterans Affairs embraced this concept,” Dr. Craft said, adding that the NE VA team won a national award in 2023 for this endeavor.
“Now several other states are starting to duplicate this idea” he said. “If they have as many awesome dental partners as Nebraska does, then they should conduct one, too. It’s the ethically right thing to do.“ The VETMOM supporters weren’t used to working with each other and there was an initial learning curve. For instance, the Nebraska Dental Association doesn’t usually collaborate with the National Guard and Office of Oral Health doesn’t usually interrelate with dental laboratories. But when separate groups pool their valuable assets together, the joint result is greatly multiplied, and the overall outcome is just tremendous.” It’s been a great honor to serve those who serve our county.”
