Ayana Brooks got the best lesson in how small the world can be peering into the mouth of a patient.
Brooks, a senior dental hygiene student at Indiana University Northwest, was performing a comprehensive cleaning on 11-year-old Adriene Flowers during the school’s Give Kids a Smile event Saturday morning when the talk turned to a dental office across the street. Brooks went there as a child and remembered her hygienist, a woman named Alice.
“Alice? That’s my grandma,” Adriene, of Gary, said, referring to Alice Harvey.
“Really? I loved her,” Brooks said, amazed. “She was one of the people who inspired me to go into dentistry.”
A partnership with the American Dental Association to celebrate Children’s Dental Health Month, Give Kids a Smile provides local children ages 5 through 12 who don’t have dental insurance a comprehensive dental cleaning complete with x-rays, cleaning and fluoride treatments, Clinical Care Coordinator Dana Darman said. It’s a national event, with dental schools all around the country helping, and it’s free-of-charge for the patients, she said.
The program’s benefits are twofold: Not only do kids who might not have the opportunity to get regular dental checkups get a thorough treatment overseen by a dentist, but the dental hygiene students get hours toward their clinicals.
“We’re a preventative clinic, so we refer issues out to other dentists,” Darman said. “Our students, who have to get so many hours with children, adolescents and seniors, do the assessments on patients, and then the dentist instructor checks their work and comes up with a maintenance plan with them.”
Brooks, of Merrillville, was convinced to go into dental hygiene by her own dentist.
“I come from a family of seven kids, and we came to this school for years (for cleanings),” she said. “I was getting fillings done at my dentist — I was 16 — and she said, ‘I think we need more Black women in healthcare.’ After that, she let me shadow her a few times, and I was hooked.”
Coming from such a large family, Brooks said she really appreciates programs like Give Kids a Smile as well as IUN’s own program, which offers preventative dentistry services at a discounted price. Without it, she can’t imagine what her teeth might be like.
“It’s personal for me because you have to start kids young on their dental health; just because something looks Ok doesn’t mean it is,” she said. “You might not be able to afford braces, but you can keep your teeth healthy. It’s something you can’t neglect.”
Angi Gonsiorowski, of Hobart, has been a dental assistant for 13 years and is just about finished with her dental hygiene degree. She waited for her kids to grow up before she went back for her degree, she said.
“The biggest thing I learned was how the mouth affects the body in so many ways,” Gonsiorowski said. “Blood runs through your body, and it runs through your gums, so if you’re not getting your teeth cleaned, all that bacteria runs through your body. That’s why it’s so important to get your teeth cleaned and brush and floss.”
Arcella Harvey, Adreine’s mom, brought all four of her kids to the event. It was her first time, but she’s now a big fan.
“It’s a great resource for people who don’t have insurance. To have this access is a great benefit,” Harvey said. “It’s also great for the students because they get to see things that maybe they haven’t seen before. One of my kids has braces, and the hygienist was like, ‘Oh, you have to do it this way.’”
The Give Kids a Smile program, which will have a second day February 22, is filled, but residents interested in the IUN Dental School’s services should log on to https://northwest.iu.edu/dental-clinic/index.html.
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
