Celebrating one year of improved rural dental care

One year after the Kingsport Dental Clinic of the Appalachian Highlands opened, its impact is clear. More than 470 patients have received care - some returning for multiple visits already.

This clinic is made possible by the University of Tennessee (UT) Health Science Center's College of Dentistry in partnership with the Eastman Foundation and other local partners, and it offers quality dental care in rural Appalachia on a need-based, sliding scale fee structure. The clinic offers many services, including extractions, dentures, root canals, crowns, fillings, dental cleanings and other preventive services.

"It's all about community," said John Royal, the director and supervising dentist of the Kingsport clinic. "What we're doing here will have long-lasting effects on our region from improving the community's overall health to having more access to dental care in Appalachia."

Dental and dental hygiene students are supervised by practicing dentists. The clinic provides a training opportunity for students in addition to patient care.

The clinic is also a training site, supervised by Royal and other local dentists.

In its first year, the clinic hosted 41 students from the UT Health Science Center in Memphis, Tennessee, and 44 clinical rotation dental hygiene students from East Tennessee State University.

Tinah Le, a fourth-year student from UT and native of Nashville, began her rotation at the clinic in August this year.

"This rotation allows us to get more clinical experience and have more control in patient care, but we still have supervising doctors here who we can go to with questions and advice," Le said. "We're also learning the workflow of a clinic - using the technology and equipment, working with an assistant and managing multiple patients efficiently."

Fourth year UT dental student Tinah Le, talks to a child about preventative hygiene. About half of the patients seen at the Kingsport clinic are children.

Three local high school students also completed healthcare rotations at the clinic, further encouraging students to consider their hometown to practice healthcare in the future.

In addition to providing dental care for the Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia region, the project also inspires students to serve more rural areas as they start their careers. This would create a long-term impact on areas that have the greatest need for dental services. After their experience at the Kingsport clinic, several students expressed a desire to return to the region upon completion of their programs.

"Students come here to Kingsport and work at the clinic, and they also get to experience what it's like living in our region," Royal said. "They see how nice it is, and the goal is to encourage them to start their career here, come back to this area one day or find similar rural areas in need of dental providers."

"We're very holistic in our approach to supporting the local community even beyond the care we provide here. We source local lab and medical gas support, we have dentists from the community who help us supervise students - even the art on our office walls is local." - John Royal, director and supervising dentist.

There are already plans to grow the clinic, too, with an increase from 12 to 30 patient chairs in the next phase. There are also longer-term plans to host a year-long dental rotation for 12 to 15 dental students as the program matures and offer UT students the option to complete their final year of the doctor of dental surgery program in Kingsport instead of Memphis.