For hundreds of families who live at or below the poverty line, health insurance or paying for dental care is not an option. Mission Children's Dental Program provides them a safety net that stretches across Western North Carolina.
Oral health problems such as oral pain, infections, and missing teeth can affect a child's physical, mental and social well-being. Like any other disease, oral disease needs to be treated. A healthy mouth contributes positively to physical, mental and social well-being and to the enjoyment of life's possibilities, by allowing the child to speak, eat and socialize unimpeded by pain, discomfort or embarrassment.
Mission Children's Dental Program provides a variety of dental services to return a child's mouth to good health and keep it that way. Once their oral health issues have been addressed, children go on to maintain their oral health in a dental office in the community.
Children are eligible for our services if they are:
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Covered by Medicaid
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Or covered by Health Choice
- Or ineligible for public insurance and have no private insurance
Children's Dental Services
Mission dentists provide preventative procedures including:
- Fluoride application and placing sealants;
- Restorative procedures - amalgams, composites, pulp treatment, stainless steel crowns;
- Oral surgery - extraction of primary and permanent teeth.
Our residency-trained general dentists approach oral health rehabilitation in several ways:
- Treatment in the operating room under general anesthesia for children who cannot be treated easily or completely in a traditional dental setting
- Preventive and restorative dental care on The ToothBus ®mobile clinics
- Collaboration between the Mission Children's Dental Program dentists and its staff with community health initiatives and education efforts:
- Head Start dental screenings
- Group Parent Education
- "Into the Mouths of Babes" Fluoride Varnish Program
Advocacy, Education and Teaching
- Mentoring of University of North Carolina dental students
- Mentoring of MAHEC General Practice Dentistry Residents
- In-person and web-based technical assistance on starting mobile safety net clinics
- Education for community health care providers on the importance of oral health and disease identification
Our clinical staff is available to speak to any audience. We are frequent presenters at national meetings.
Our Dentists
Katherine D. Jowers, DDS
Daniel D. Leonard, DDS, ABGD
Mark D. Remick, DDS
Stephanie A. Sabatini, DDS, MPH
Contact Us
To learn more about the Dental Programs hospital and community based programs located at the Reuter Outpatient Center, or to request a speaker for an event, please call us at 828-213-1700.
