Making a Difference in the Community One Person at a Time
American Student Dental Association (ASDA), in cooperation with Community Health Programs (CHP), volunteered at the Notre Dame Educational Center (NDEC) Dental Health Fair on November 9. Fransheska Ovalles DMD 13 and Jenny Lorenzo DMD 13 took the lead in organizing the event on behalf of the ASDA Community Outreach Committee.
Ovalles said, “Our event at the Notre Dame Education Center was a great success. More than 30 people received dental screenings and many more interacted with us and learned about important topics related to oral health such as diabetes, oral cancer, and smoking.”
About 15 dental students volunteered. ASDA has volunteered at NDEC on prior occasions and explains that they continue to be interested in following up with the students of NDEC and providing oral health information and services to a population in need.
Ovalles said of her fellow volunteers: “I think the dental student volunteers felt a great sense of satisfaction after all of the thanks we received from the NDEC students and staff. Also teaching the young students about oral hygiene was very rewarding. We had a 19-year-old student that stayed for the entire session and continued to ask questions such as ‘How do caries form? How does fluoride prevent cavities? Is that really oral cancer and does smoking really cause that?’” Ovalles continued, “It was gratifying for me and the rest of the students to see him genuinely interested in dentistry and interacting in a way that taught him so much. Making a difference one person at a time is a great start to educate our community on oral health and we all felt that we contributed to all of the students’ oral health education at this event.”
NDEC students were mainly interested in learning about oral cancer and smoking, as well as how and where they can access dental care. One of the resources that the dental students were pleased to explain was the BU Student Dental Plan, which was recently extended as an option to the students of NDEC.
Photos are available on facebook and flickr.