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By DAVID J. HILL and SARA SALDI

Published: August 2, 2012

On Give Kids a Smile Day 2011, then-first-year students Kelly Burch and Colleen Lacombe discovered something about a particular group of children who’d come to the clinics for the annual event. It was a group of kids from an Amish community, and the need for better oral care was evident.

Michael Hatton, clinical associate professor and director of oral medicine in the School of Dental Medicine (SDM), asked Burch to talk to some of Amish mothers in the waiting room. “I sat down next to one of the mothers and asked her some questions, trying to find out the root of her child’s tooth decay,” Burch recalls. “It was just lack of education. It wasn’t a lack of money or religious reasons, it’s education.”

Seeing the group led to another realization: The Amish children needed more care than what could be provided in a brief time on Give Kids a Smile Day. So Burch and Lacombe approached Dian ChinKit-Wells, clinical assistant professor in the Department of Pediatric and Community Dentistry; and Debbie Licata, the department’s outreach coordinator, about the possibility of creating an outreach program for the Amish.

“These delightful, energetic young ladies were very excited, and quite honestly so were Debbie Licata and myself,” says Wells.

“We knew the children we were seeing often had rampant decay and were challenging to treat. There were also obvious barriers: distance from dental care opportunities, cultural ‘fire walls’ such as not being willing to have the children treated under general anesthesia,” Wells says. “In addition, we had not been able to provide dental education to help prevent further cavities from forming and to help the community understand the scope of our care and the mission of UBSDM and our outreach team.”

With permission from Paul Creighton and Joseph Bernat, both clinical associate professors in pediatric and community dentistry, Wells and Licata teamed up the dental students with a resident, Kristin Bender, and the dream became a reality,” according to Wells.

In July 2011, the students visited an Amish farmhouse in Sherman, N.Y., a rural village about a half-hour west of Jamestown. “We sat on the lawn of an Amish farm in the shade of a tree and talked to them about brushing and flossing, focusing on hygiene and good foods and bad foods,” Burch says.

That November, they returned to the Amish community and visited three schoolhouses. They were expecting to talk to maybe a few dozen moms and children. Instead, more than 100 showed up. Of the 120 children they saw that day, only four were free of caries.

The reasons are varied. The Amish often live in rural areas that have limited access to dentists and travel to the nearest office can be expensive. In addition, many of the Amish have well water, which lacks fluoride.

The group was very receptive to and grateful for the information the dental students provided during their visit, Lacombe says. “They listen, and they want to be active about it,” she says. “Their desire to take action is great.”

The dental school collaborated with Erie Community College’s Dental Hygiene Program to offer X-rays for 30 Amish community members. They saw another 35 children in February for Give Kids a Smile Day 2012.

Over the past year, Burch and Lacombe have developed a rapport with the Amish community. In fact, the community members are not “the Amish.” Instead, they are SDM’s “Amish friends,” a name that reflects the relationship the school has cultivated.

“The relationship we’ve established with this community is not just a dentist-patient relationship. They’ve invited us to family dinners and an Amish Christmas event,” says Burch. “For them to let us into the community is the most rewarding thing about this.”

Adds Wells, “This is a unique and perhaps first-ever program in New York State, maybe even the country. Prior to us, our Amish friends were only taken to the nearest dentist if they had a toothache, and the tooth was extracted. We were destined to show that dentistry was much more than ‘pulling teeth,’ and that we care. In return we have received warm and appreciated welcomes and an opportunity to make a life-changing difference.”

The ultimate goal is for UB to serve as the dental home for the group. “We want to establish a regular system of care for them,” says Lacombe, who is working to organize a health fair in the fall, at which students will conduct blood glucose tests, check participants’ blood pressure and distribute information on early cancer detection.