MORGANTOWN — Since September 2018, the Monongalia County Health Department’s mobile dental clinic known as Smile Express has provided preventative dental care to more than 1,700 students at 63 schools in six counties.
Counting regular customers, Smile Express coordinator Tiffany Summerlin said the number is likely to be more than 2,500.
Pretty impressive considering he practically missed an entire school year due to COVID-19.
Extremely impressive considering it was largely accomplished by two women and a 20-year-old Winnebago.
Summerlin, a dental hygienist, has been the driving force behind the mobile dentistry program, literally and figuratively, since its inception.
Summerlin performs all of the assessments, exams, or cleanings provided to every student who comes aboard old Smiley.
Velvet Urgo, a dental assistant at MCHD for the past 24 years, has been his right hand from the beginning.
“His heart is as big as this room. She inspires me to get up every morning and do what we do,” Summerlin said of Urgo, during a recent report to the Monongalia County Board of Health.
He offered an example of that heart with the story of a 5-year-old girl the couple recently met at a Harrison County school.
Sixteen of the child’s 20 primary teeth were decayed. He had three abscesses.
His family, who had recently arrived from Mexico, had no insurance or means to cover the approximately $1,300 needed for the $2,700 treatment plan through MCHD.
So Urgo called America’s ToothFairy, a resource provider that supports nonprofit clinics that provide treatment to underserved children.
Summerlin said America’s ToothFairy gives out annual grants to help with dental care for young patients, but it wasn’t the time for grants, and those grants are typically up to $500.
“Velvet had it in mind that I would just call and ask. She explained this little girl’s story…and they ended up sending a check to cover this little girl’s entire treatment plan,” Summerlin said.
“There are many links in that chain that have to happen, but without Velvet’s thought and her love for the patients we serve and without doing everything possible to make that happen, it wouldn’t even be a possibility for that child to have any dental care performed.” ”.
Urgo said she was affected by the state of the girl’s teeth.
“I had never seen anything like his case in person before,” he said. “I just felt like something had to happen. My heart went out to her and after Tiffany spoke to her mother, you could tell they were struggling a lot.”
Urgo has been known to walk up to 5 miles a day with young patients between Smile Express and the various schools they visit. This is in addition to their other duties: charting, sterilizing instruments, assembling toothbrush bags, and providing oral health instruction.
“I never thought when I started here that my job would be in mobile dentistry. It is very rewarding, but at the same time we hear a lot of sad stories and see a lot of sad things,” Urgo said, explaining that it is not unusual to find high school students who have never been to a dentist’s office or children who don’t have a toothbrush in home.
“We’re happy to be able to go out and provide services to students because a lot of these kids wouldn’t get any dental services if it weren’t for us traveling to the school and providing them,” he said.
Urgo said she considers Summerlin a mentor from whom she has gained the ability to adapt when things stop going as planned.
It was that tenacity that helped Summerlin secure a $500,000 grant from Aetna for a new mobile clinic that could be up and running as early as September.
Unlike Smiley, it won’t be a converted mobile home, but rather a new, custom-built dental office on wheels.
The new vehicle will support the continued growth of the Smile Express program, allowing it to operate year-round as it begins to add addiction recovery centers to its list of regular stops.
Dr. Lee Smith, outgoing Monongalia County health officer, asked the board of health to consider how it can reward the “public health heroes” on its list, like Summerlin and Urgo.
“To me, this whole dental experience that we’ve had here is really a critical public health function. We reach people who otherwise wouldn’t have that: 2,500 kids in six counties. That speaks for itself,” she stated.
Urgo said he’s not really interested in recognition.
It’s a mission.
“It’s God’s work, no doubt,” said MCHD Executive Director Anthony DeFelice. “And they are doing it.”
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