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Dental Van Keeps Rolling with Gift from St. Luke’s Episcopal Health Charities
The Community Dental Van provides dental services to children and adults throughout East Texas.
Photos by Shannon Rasp
The University of Texas Dental Branch at Houston’s Community Dental Van, which provides dental services to children and adults throughout East Texas, will receive $225,000 over the next six years from St. Luke’s Episcopal Health Charities.
“We believe this dental resource for Houston is invaluable in bringing services directly to adults and children,” said Carla Cooper, executive director of St. Luke’s Episcopal Health Charities. “Our mission is to advance community health, and we are delighted and honored to work with the Dental Branch in pursuing that mission.”
The three-chair van enables dental staff to provide pediatric, adolescent, adult and geriatric dental care.
“We are able to do everything in the van that we presently do in our clinics,” said John Valenza, D.D.S., associate dean for patient care at the Dental Branch and director of the van’s operations. “That includes filling teeth, pediatric sealants, emergency care for those experiencing oral pain, oral cancer screenings, treatment planning, prevention counseling, tooth care and hygiene, and dental education. We even have our own instrument sterilization and computerized digital radiology areas onboard the van.”
John Valenza, D.D.S., who directs operations for the UT Dental Branch at Houston’s Community Dental Van, adjusts the light for one of the three dental chairs in the van.
The van also has received a contract for service for $178,000 from the Fort Bend Family Health Center for Richmond and Stafford sites. Another contract, from Communities in Schools Houston, will grant $30,000 in operating funds to treat children at the van, plus referring a number of them, if needed, to the Dental Branch’s pediatric dentistry clinic.
The van, which has been in operation since September 2002, was made possible by a start-up gift from St. Luke’s Episcopal Health Charities. The van is the 82nd outreach and care program undertaken by the Dental Branch, which provides nearly a million dollars a year in charity care.
St. Luke’s Episcopal Health Charities, founded in 1997 as a separate component of St. Luke’s Episcopal Health System, has awarded more than $36 million to more than 375 non-profit programs throughout the Episcopal Diocese of Texas.
— By Shannon Rasp, Public Affairs