The Delta Dental Foundation – a charity-oriented nonprofit that’s focused on promoting oral health care in communities – is providing Guilford County with some funds that will be used to beef up the county’s dental health service for kids with immediate dental needs.

The Guilford County Department of Health and Human Services is receiving $5,000 from the foundation to provide dental care for kids who’ve been identified during dental screenings held at schools as children with “urgent dental needs.”

The service will be available to the children in families who are “unable to find care due to inability to pay.”

In 2015, the county began the program called Guilford Smiles for Kids – Project Access Dental. Over the last eight years, the initiative has been entirely funded by grants and has provided emergency dental services to more than 50 uninsured children in Guilford County.

The average cost of care is $250-$500 per child. It’s estimated that 15 children can be served by funding from this grant. Guilford County’s Dental Clinic is the only program offering this service in the Guilford County Schools.

The new grant  funding will be used to assist school-aged children who have emergency dental needs.

The treatments, according to information from county health staff, will be limited to “emergency exams, x-rays, composite or amalgam fillings, extractions, pulp therapy, crowns, and space maintenance.”

In part due to the new grant, nurses in Guilford County schools will have the resources to guide parents to Guilford County’s Dental Clinic – and, due to the care they receive there, the child will “feel better, eat better, sleep better, and be more productive at school.”

Each year in recent years, Guilford County has been ramping up its effort to get more nurses in county schools with the view that healthy kids, among other things, learn better.

 

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