Mobile Clinic provides students with easy access to dental care

Emily Kemper | The Chronicle

Mason City Schools has numerous resources available to students and families to promote learner mental and physical health, including the HealthSource of Ohio Mobile Dental clinic, which came to the Mason City Schools Central Office from April 21 to May 2. HealthSource of Ohio serves schools in Southwest Ohio by sending mobile dental and vision health services directly to schools.

TJ Glassmeyer, Learner Well-Being and Supports Supervisor for the Mason City Schools district, said that HealthSource works primarily with students and families who do not have insurance or enough insurance to cover the cost of dental care; however, their services are open to any student who needs them. Glassmeyer said that the clinic will be set up at Mason Central Office due to having the most available space, and he has been working with the district transportation team to help students get to and from the clinic. “We have about 80 students who have signed up to come, and we may end up with about 40 more by the time we’re done,” Glassmeyer said. “So over 100 that we’re going to bring from their building, whether it’s MECC, ME, MI or MHS, to the central office for their dental service.” Chloe Socha, Resource Coordinator for grades 7-12 at Mason City Schools, said that there was a direct need for dental services from students she serves in the district due to trouble securing an appointment, so the Mobile Dental clinic will make that service easily available to them. Socha said HealthSource provides students with dental care during school hours to reduce barriers in timing and transportation for families scheduling appointments. “Especially since COVID, dental appointments are really hard to come by,” Socha said. “We weren’t even sure if the clinic would be able to come this year because of how booked they are, but thankfully, they had some weeks they were able to give us.” Glassmeyer said that the dental clinic is not just a medical service to relieve a sore tooth, but a service for students as a whole. He said that it is important that students have access to resources that support them academically, emotionally, physically, behaviorally, or in any other aspect they may need to be set up for success. “It’s important that all students have their needs met,” Glassmeyer said. “If you are coming to school with a toothache, you just can’t focus on your academics. So whether it’s the dental clinic, or by us providing them with food, clothing or helping with shelter, we want to make sure that when kids are here they can focus on learning, not worrying about where their next meal is going to come from, or where they’re going to sleep tonight, or that pain in their tooth.” Mary Eck, Resource Coordinator for grades Pre-K through six at Mason City Schools, also said that dental care affects multiple aspects of a student’s life, and that having a Mobile Dental clinic decreases the number of obstacles students face in getting the care they need. “Dental care can impact speech and nutrition,” said Eck. “For example, if your teeth hurt, imagine how difficult it might be to eat certain food.

HealthSource Mobile Dental is great because they come to the patients during our school hours, which reduces some of the time the student may have to miss class since the clinic is on-site.” Clifford Steinle, DDS, a Dentist with HealthSource Mobile Dental, said that while it is of course important to treat existing dental problems, educating patients and families about oral health and preventing issues is just as important for HealthSource. “We really try very hard to not just go in and identify problems, but to educate the children as to how to take care of their own oral health, and hopefully their overall health, for the rest of their life,” said Steinle. “I’ve only been here a year, but I have colleagues that have been doing it for longer, and seeing some of their patients, [from when] they had a mouthful of cavities in their baby teeth to middle school and high school where they’ve learned to maintain better oral care and don’t have any problems with their permanent teeth. That’s really the goal of the program; to educate not just the kids, but the parents and anybody else involved too, on how to [maintain] their oral health.” Steinle said that there are major differences in working for mobile dental as opposed to a private practice, one being that mobile staff are working in a different space every few weeks.

Steinle also said that it is very different to work with regular patients who stay with the same dentist for many years than to work with patients who may only visit once, or a handful of times throughout their adolescence. However, he says that many of the patients he sees would not receive dental care if it were not through their school, so spreading those services to people who need them is very important. “In private practice, you’ve got a brick-and-mortar building, and a group of patients that come to you for years,” Steinle said. “I’ve seen patients, [their] kids, and [their] kids’ kids over the years. But in mobile dental, we are in a different site just about every week or two, all over southern Ohio.

A lot of the contacts we have are with children that wouldn’t normally see a dentist, or their first encounter with a dentist is in [a] school setting. That’s one of the big benefits.” Eck said that she thinks it would be wonderful to offer more mobile health services for students in Mason in the future. Eck said that she is hopeful that HealthSource Mobile Dental is a service that will continue to benefit Mason City Schools and expand to additional dental and vision care services for students. “The nursing staff at several of our Mason buildings have worked with the Warren County Health Department to bring their Mobile Vaccination program to the schools, and there is one coming up this May,” said Eck. “These types of services are great and convenient for all of our families.”