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Oral cancer screening reaches Hispanic community
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“In Venezuela, we were always linked to the community. Here, we didn’t have a connection.”
“Boca Sana Cuerpo Sano,” said the flyer posted in the Judge J. Mattina Community Health Center on Buffalo’s largely Hispanic Lower West Side: “Healthy Mouth Healthy Body.”
It alerted the community to the upcoming free oral-cancer screening at the clinic conducted by faculty, dental residents and students from the UB School of Dental Medicine.
More than 100 people from the surrounding neighborhood showed up during the two-day event to have their teeth checked for cavities and their mouths for gum disease and signs of oral cancer. Some were regular patients at the health center; some were not, but they came anyway and brought family members. Five patients were found to have suspicious lesions.
“We were bombarded,” says Yoly Gonzalez, the event’s founder. “People wanted to be screened. They brought their relatives. They didn’t come for the free toothbrush and toothpaste.”
This was the screening’s fifth year—and the most well-attended yet—but it wasn’t always so successful. Gonzalez, UB clinical assistant professor of oral diagnostic sciences, and a cadre of students, residents and faculty members had to do a bit of cajoling to get the project started.
A native of Venezuela, Gonzalez earned a dental degree from the Universidad Central de Venezuela in Caracas, where the fifth year of study was devoted to community service. She spent six months working with the Guajiros and Piaroas Indians in the Venezuelan jungle. But when Gonzalez joined the UB dental school faculty, she found a void.
“In Venezuela, we were always linked to the community. Here, we didn’t have a connection,” she says.
The West Side health center, established by Kaleida Health to serve the Hispanic community, was the logical place to create such a connection, so Gonzalez paid a visit and brought along a few students.
Energized by the experience, the students formed a chapter of the Hispanic Dental Association. Wanting to do something other than sponsor parties, the members decided to conduct a yearly free oral-cancer screening at the clinic.
That first year, Gonzalez and a small UB team, with the support of Rene Perez-Bode, the clinic’s full-time dentist, set up tables in the clinic lobby stocked with information on dental health and oral cancer.
“It was a very slow beginning,” Gonzalez recalls. “Many people didn’t even know there was such a thing as oral cancer. They’d say, ‘You can get cancer in your mouth?’”
Volunteers took a brief medical history of those initial patients to make sure they weren’t afraid of dentists or allergic to the latex gloves worn by examiners. If something suspicious was detected by an examiner, Gonzalez made an appointment for the patient at the UB dental school clinic.
The following year, the volunteers added a table on smoking cessation. With funds from a New York State Quit Line grant, they gave away toothbrushes, toothpaste, apples and bottled water. The names of smokers who were ready to quit were passed along to the Quit Line, which provided two weeks of nicotine-replacement patches and continued encouragement.
Attendance at the yearly event increased gradually. “It’s been an effort from the heart,” Gonzalez says. “It grew little by little.”
This year, a team of 10 students, faculty and staff screened more than 50 patients a day over the two-day event. Heidi Crow, associate professor of oral diagnostic sciences, had joined the group and there now were three dental chairs at the clinic—two for routine screenings and a third for patients whose teeth needed immediate attention.
The team’s next step is to raise money for patients who fall into the gap—those who can’t afford dental insurance but aren’t eligible for Medicare. Team members also would like to conduct screenings twice a year to reach more people.
A visit to the most recent screening by Mark King, president of the American Cancer Society’s regional board of advisors, may help that effort. Impressed by the event, King wants to take the UB model for oral-cancer screening to other communities and raise funds to support those efforts.
“Our main objective is to provide a service to our local community,” Gonzalez stresses. “It’s wonderful to help people anywhere, but we have needs right here.”
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