Dental and dental hygiene students
provide care at Saul Martinez Elementary School

The service learning department has reached another milestone in its efforts to bring dental care to the regional community.

On September 25, five senior dental and two senior hygiene students provided dental care to adults at the Saul Martinez Elementary School.

In the School's fifth year of providing dental treatment in the Coachella valley, this is the first time adults have been treated at this facility.

When children in a family have limited access to dental care, many of the parents do as well. Thus, treating only the children in the family does not impact the family as fully as treating the entire family.

The department of service learning worked with the school principal and local School Board on the project.

On the day of the school's Parents Conference, the Loma Linda students performed heavy duty scaling and polishing, amalgam and composite restorations, and extractions on 12 adults.

It was a tired group that left the desert clinic that night but the service was appreciated by the patients, and word of our work has spread throughout the local community.

The School of Dentistry plans to repeat this program once each academic quarter, involving parents so that they can be partners with us in improving the oral health of the children we treat.

Those involved include fourth-year dental students David Castillo, William Carter, Sherry Edwards, Michael Cho, and Lan Dihn, and Judy Lim and Liesl Ruhl, senior dental hygiene students.

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