Free dental care for foster care youth in Sacramento

Verizon Foundation helps 400 foster children
Robertson, Kathy. Sacramento Business Journal, Sept. 21, 2009.

More than 400 foster-care students in Sacramento will get free dental care thanks to a telemedicine project funded by a $100,000 start-up grant from the Verizon Foundation.

The project was created by the California Dental Association, University of the Pacific Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry and the California Health Care Foundation to improve access to care.

The grant by the philanthropic arm of Verizon will support the first year of a project at Twin Rivers Unified School District in Sacramento and a second site in Southern California.

The four-year pilot project will improve access to dental services in 15 community locations across California by giving participating dentists the technological ability to examine patients remotely with help from dental hygienists and dental assistants in underserved communities.

After remote exams, dental hygienists and assistants will perform preventive and temporary treatment. More complex cases will be referred to dentists.

The collaboration “demonstrates that when partnerships are formed, we can still do great things in and for our communities even during times of unprecedented budgetary constraints,” Sen. President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said in a news release.