Welcome to University of Iowa Health Care Today. This weekend in Waterloo, the Iowa Dental Association Foundation is sponsoring the first ever Iowa Mission of Mercy. Dr. Patricia Meredith joins me now by phone to tell us more about the Iowa Mission of Mercy. Dr. Meredith is a clinical associate professor in Hospital Dentistry at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics and the dental chief for the Mission of Mercy event. Dr. Meredith,
Explain to us, what is the Mission of Mercy, and when and where is it going to take place?
The Mission of Mercy is a two-day event. It’s being held in Waterloo at the Five Sullivan Brothers Convention Center. It will be October 3-4, 2008 and it’s for free dental care. People can begin to stand in line at any time; the doors will open at 7 a.m. each morning for treatment. We are going to have dentists, dental professionals, assistants, hygienists; as well as lay volunteers, interpreters, and escorts all available to help provide care for these patients.
Who is volunteering to staff the clinic this weekend?
We have about six hundred and fifty people volunteering already in our data base and it’s growing every day.
How do patients qualify to be seen for free dental care this weekend?
The great thing is there’s really no way you have to qualify except to stand in line. We expect that there will be quite long lines; people will probably begin standing in line the night before. I mentioned that treatment begins at 7 a.m. every morning, so anyone who has a dental need and is willing to stand in line will get their dental care provided for free.
How many patients does the clinic expect to see?
We expect to treat at least a thousand patients, and maybe more.
When someone comes to the Mission of Mercy, what should they expect and would it be realistic for them to expect to receive all of their treatment in that day?
We can’t complete everyone’s treatment, so our goal is to provide the most urgent needs of each individual person to the most number of people that we can. So probably not to receive all of their care, but certainly to take care of the things that are the most needed during that day.
Are both days of the clinic full, or can qualifying people still make an appointment?
Actually, there are no appointments; you just have to come and stand in line and wait your turn. Once you complete your most urgent need, if you’d like to, you are encouraged to go stand in line again and get your next most urgent need completed at the clinic. They are going to get their most urgent need taken care of; whether that’s removal of a tooth, or a filling, or maybe replacement of a single tooth with a little removable device, or, maybe as a child they need a checkup—that may be the thing they get done first. And then if they’d like to have more treatment, they can get back in that line and come through again and get more treatment done.
What about some more highly involved practices, like if a youngster needs braces or someone needs their gums raised?
Those are things we’re not going to be able to provide at our Mission of Mercy. We are providing removal of teeth, fillings, cleanings, and replacement of one or two teeth. We are providing that and also for children, then we’re providing complete exams and fillings and those kinds of things. The more advanced treatments that require multiple visits—we’re just not able to do at the Mission of Mercy.
How much money will the Mission of Mercy raise this weekend with free dental care?
This event is put on—sponsored—by the Iowa Dental Foundation, and they’re supplying the initial funds. We’ve gotten quite a bit of support from general sponsors, and we actually will not raise money, but will—in other words—provide care. We expect to provide in excess of five hundred thousand dollars worth of dental care for free this weekend.
How do you see this event developing in the future?
We’re hoping that this will become an annual event. There are states around us—Kansas, Colorado, and Nebraska—that have Missions of Mercy that they do every year and they move to different parts of the state based upon the dental needs of the people in that area. So we’re hoping that this will go very successfully and that we will make it an annual event.
Again, it’s going to be October 3 and 4, and they begin at 7 a.m. every morning. Treatment will end at 5:30. We will probably cut off seeing new patients around 3:30 or so, depending upon the line, so you need to get there early if you want to get some treatment on one of those days and it’s being held at the Five Sullivan Brothers Convention Center in Waterloo. |
