No-cost dental hygiene clinic named ‘Partnership of the Year’ at annual community awards
The Department of Dental Hygiene at the University of New England has won “Partnership of the Year” for its ongoing collaboration with The Opportunity Alliance (TOA) to bring no-cost dental care to low-income families in the Greater Portland area.
The department was awarded the honor at The Opportunity Alliance’s annual RAISE Awards, held at the organization’s South Portland headquarters on Oct. 17. Accepting the award on behalf of the department was Garrett Richardson, IPDH, M.S.D.H., EFDA, assistant clinical professor of dental hygiene at UNE, who spearheaded the clinic as part of his classroom teaching.
Starting in 2023, Richardson and his students have provided dental cleanings, fluoride treatments, anticavity treatments, and oral health education to participants at a Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) clinic — operated by TOA — in Portland’s Bayside neighborhood.
The services, provided primarily to children under age 5, come at no cost to families for whom payment would otherwise be a barrier to much-needed dental care.
At their peak, the group can see as many as four or five families per day.
To date, they have provided care to 205 individuals who otherwise would have likely foregone dental treatment due to financial constraints, language barriers, or both. As a result of the clinics, 185 participants have been referred to a “dental home” — a primary dental care office that can best meet their needs over time.
Additional collaboration with the University of California, Los Angeles, and further financial support from Northeast Delta Dental is able to provide real-time language services for participants, about 65% of whom require a translator.
“The collaboration between The Opportunity Alliance/WIC and The University of New England's Dental Hygiene program has provided our students with amazingly rich, culturally diverse service-learning opportunities,” Richardson said. “This collaboration has been equally as educational as it has been rewarding for our students and myself due to our ability as a program to overcome so many obstacles of inequity within our existing dental health care model.”
The free dental service currently operates about 40 weeks annually during the academic year. It was featured on the front page of The Portland Press Herald in May.
UNE Assistant Clinical Professor Garrett Richardson (right) poses with TOA’s Anna Bullett.