Eighty students, dental faculty and staff from UNMC’s College of Dentistry will spend today through Saturday tending to the oral health of 200 children in western Nebraska.
This is the fourth year in which the dental college will travel across the state to offer free dental services to children in the Nebraska Panhandle.
The dental college will set up shop in four Panhandle communities — Sidney, Alliance, Chadron and Gordon — where children who have been pre-screened by local dentists will receive a variety of services including cleanings, fluoride treatments, sealants, cavity fillings, education and emergency care as needed. The total cost of services provided is estimated at $100,000.
The hospital in Alliance will be taking patients for surgical procedures, and all four communities will be set up for telehealth consultations with specialists at the dental college in Lincoln. Several private practices in each city also will be connected for telehealth consultations.
“The goal is to get as much experience with a variety of modes of transmission on our part and that of the local providers to eventually be able to provide telehealth services on a continual basis for anyone in the state,” said David Brown, Ph.D., executive associate dean at the College of Dentistry.
The following is a listing of participating sites:
- Alliance: Donald Taylor, Jr., D.D.S., 916 West 10th and Box Butte General Hospital.
- Chadron: Chadron Community Hospital.
- Gordon: Gordon Memorial Hospital.
- Sidney: William Printz, D.D.S., 1340 10th Ave., Melanie Kroft, D.D.S., 1211 Newton.