Give Kids A Smile Day to Provide Free Dental Care for Hundreds of Children in Wisconsin
Give Kids A Smile Dental Clinic Underscores Critical Need in State
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Neighborhood Smiles of Belleville will be sponsoring a Give Kids A Smile® event on February 18, 2016, at their Belleville, Wisconsin, location to provide underserved children with free dental services.
Nearly one in four children aged two to 11 years old has untreated cavities in their baby teeth, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Many children enrolled in Medicaid receive no dental services throughout the year.
Give Kids A Smile is held annually to:
Provide free, easily accessible dental services to qualifying individuals.
Raise awareness of the epidemic of untreated dental disease occurring locally and nationally and create local public and private partnerships to increase access to oral health care to solve this crisis.
The Wisconsin Dental Association has been launching Give Kids A Smile events for 12 years as a way to provide free dental care to local children who desperately need it. These events have provided free care to 63,917 children that otherwise would have cost $8.3 million.
The American Dental Association (ADA) launched the Give Kids A Smile program nationally in 2003 as a way for dentists to join with others in the community to provide dental services to underserved children. Each year, about 350,000 to 400,000 children benefit from more than 1,500 events, all because of the efforts of 40,000 or more annual volunteers nationwide.
The high volume of patients participating in charitable events like Give Kids A Smile highlights a clear gap between those with and without good dental health. Considering that oral health is connected to total health, financial barriers to care should be of major concern to the leaders of our state.
As it stands now, the Medicaid system that provides for children in need is underfunded. Even with sufficient support from outside resources, many individuals must often go without preventative care, which often leads to a need for more costly emergency treatment.
For more information about Give Kids A Smile events, visit http://www.ada.org/en/home-ada/public-programs/give-kids-a-smile. To learn more about proposed solutions to the dental crisis, visit http://www.ada.org/action.
