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Special to the Gazette
By Becky Berry, senior in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
That's the age-old lesson that University dental hygiene students have been
able to teach a group of Siler City Hispanic immigrants, thanks to a $5,000
grant from the Carolina Center for Public Service.
Adult immigrants often don't earn enough money to be able to make dental care a
priority. And while children typically get service in free clinics, adults tend
to forego treatment to provide other needs for their families. The University's
School of Medicine and Duke Endowment teamed up to reverse that trend through
the "Immigrant Health Initiative," which allows lay health advisers to consult
with Hispanic patients in Siler City.
After visiting a bus the initiative uses to bring dental-care advisers to
immigrants, Vickie Overman thought of another way to meet some of the patients'
needs while providing learning opportunities for some of her students. But she
needed funding.
Overman, associate clinical professor in the Department of Dental Ecology and
the director of the preventive recall clinic in the School of Dentistry, along
with Mary George, director of dental hygiene programs and Pam Frasier,
assistant professor of family medicine at the School of Medicine, received a
Carolina Center for Public Service grant that allowed them to carry out
Overman's two-fold plan.
The grant is funding dental screenings and follow-up treatments for 28
immigrants. Buses and vans, sponsored by the local churches, bring the patients
from Siler City to the School of Dentistry. The program, which began in August,
is drawing to a close as the last few patients complete treatments.
"The project provides students and staff a rich learning environment for
developing cultural competency in caring for Hispanic cultures, in identifying
their dental needs and in providing preventive dental care," Overman said. "We
kind of piggy-backed onto the structure that was already there with the lay
health advisers."
Students and faculty screen patients and accept adults who make good teaching
cases and need more than a one-visit cleaning. Because Hispanic culture focuses
on eliminating pain and not on prevention, Overman said, many of the patients
had never had a professional cleaning. Patients often need four or five
cleanings to remove the tartar and plaque build-up. Patients also receive oral
and written instructions -- in Spanish -- about the proper way to brush and
floss.
"A lot of [patients], you could tell, were timid. But because they were all
coming together, and once they were here and saw what we were doing in helping
them, they were just so appreciative," Overman said.
"I would definitely say it was a good challenge to get the different experience
from a different culture and also a different patient," said Caroline Chen, a
second-year dental hygiene student from Los Angeles. "You know, their society
about oral health and cleaning is very different than our society here in
America.
"I think by cleaning [a female patient's] teeth and showing her what she was
like before and then after probably will motivate her more to seek dental
care."
The students learn more than how to use their hygiene skills; they also learn
how to communicate with patients who speak little or no English. Two Spanish
interpreters from the dental school and lay health experts from Siler City's
participating churches help bridge the language barrier.
"One of the things that I think was very nice was that it benefited both their
population and ours," Overman said. "It benefited our students because a lot of
our students had not seen patients that were this difficult to work on. I think
that they got really challenged in being able to utilize their skills."
Overman said she hopes the students will be able to treat five or six more
Hispanic patients this semester with the remaining grant funds.
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