For thousands of the poorest of DuPage County’s poor, the state-funding ax that cut off Medicaid dental benefits for adults last July meant visiting the dentist was something only other people could do.
“They have absolutely nowhere to go,” said Mary Ellen Durbin, executive director of the People’s Resource Center in Wheaton, a private non-profit social agency. Their plight haunts her. “There was a man who was in so much pain from an infected tooth that out of desperation he extracted it himself.”
Standing by and watching the area’s homeless, impoverished elderly and disabled citizens do without so basic a health need as dental care was not acceptable to the center. So it’s not too surprising that the same group that started the DuPage PADS (Public Action to Deliver Shelter) homeless shelter program in 1985 rolled up its sleeves to bridge another gap between the haves and have-nots.
The People’s Resource Center Dental Clinic is scheduled to open the week of May 20. The 800,000-square-foot addition to the center’s storefront building is staffed by 29 volunteer dentists and seven hygienists and equipped with donated furnishings, instruments and supplies. Durbin expects to keep the center’s two examination and treatment rooms humming five days a week providing primary dental care: cleaning, X-rays, fillings and extractions.
“We expect to take care of 2,000 people the first year, and that’s a very conservative figure,” Durbin said. “We know the first month will be booked solid with emergency patients, people in severe tooth pain. We’ve had people calling here for months pleading for appointments.”
“Mary Ellen has a big task. I think she’ll be overwhelmed starting on Day 1,” said Beverly Parota, manager of health promotions and dental services manager at DuPage County Health Department.
Parota spearheaded the DuPage Dental Care Referral Program in 1986, which refers 1,600 to 1,700 uninsured low-income wage earners to 125 local dentists who have agreed to provide services at their offices at minimal cost to the patient. The resource center’s free clinic will pick up where that program leaves off, providing dental care to those who cannot pay.
Parota and Durbin candidly admit the free clinic, funded in part with a $96,000 community block grant, is grossly undersized for its mission.
“It’s pie in the sky to think the clinic can handle all of the dental needs of the poor in this county,” said Parota, who is on the clinic’s advisory board. “The average person we see in the referral program has four or five dental problems, so (based on clinic projections of 2,000 patients a year) you’re talking about taking care of 9,000 to 10,000 (teeth in need of fillings). . . . So it has to be a cooperative effort of all resources working together to meet the needs of the community–all the pieces are important.”
But Durbin is a pragmatic do-gooder. The trick to managing skimpy resources is to do the best you can with what you’ve got and keep telling your story to as many people as will listen. Her motto: Win their hearts to your cause, and their checks will soon follow.
“We’re a grass-roots organization,” she said. “We serve as an incubator for critical-services programs for those in poverty, until those programs can become self-sustaining.” Case in point: the center’s on-site free medical clinic that now operates as a separate non-profit entity. “Eventually the dental clinic will be a separate (non-profit) program.” Meanwhile, she is scrambling to raise $200,000 in donations to open a third treatment room “that we needed yesterday” and cover annual operating expenses, estimated at about $135,000.
As if on cue, a modestly dressed woman quietly walked up to her, whispered a few words and handed her a sealed white envelope. Durbin smiled and nodded thanks. The woman left. The encounter lasted less than 10 seconds. Without opening the envelope, Durbin announced, “She tithes. There’s some cash in here. She doesn’t want a receipt. This is just her way. Every so often she just walks in and gives me an envelope.”
Others donate their time. “This clinic owes its existence to the generosity of the dental community,” said Pat Ciebien of Riverside, dental clinic director. Dentists with thriving practices agreed to clear their calendars of paying customers at least a half-day a month to volunteer at the clinic, “because they know their time with us is so well spent.”
“The simple fact is people on public aid have no access to dental care; so, when the pain becomes unbearable, they show up in the emergency room, where they’re given pain medication and antibiotics and sent on their way,” said Dr. Vickyann Chrobak of Wheaton, dental clinic volunteer and former associate professor at Loyola University School of Dentistry in Maywood. Before the school closed in 1993, she estimated it provided dental services for about 2,400 indigent DuPage residents a year.
“The health consequences of untreated dental problems can be life-threatening to people who have medical conditions that make them prone to infection,” said Ciebien’s husband, Dr. Gerald Ciebien, who serves on the advisory board of the dental clinic and on the access to care committee of the Chicago Dental Society. “Because preventive care is virtually non-existent for adults on public aid, their (teeth) will slowly be destroyed, their health compromised, and they will endure much suffering,” he said.
Tragically, children are among the pain-stricken, said Dr. Kyle Pedersen of Woodridge, a clinic volunteer and pediatric dentist. “I’ve seen child neglect first hand,” he said. Pedersen worked at a free dental clinic in New Mexico during a dental school internship. Even though Medicaid still pays for dental care for children, many parents on public aid are so consumed “by the need to survive from one day to the next that taking the kids to the dentist is a pretty low priority,” he said. By housing the clinic under the same roof with the center’s other food and clothing services, the center becomes a one-stop-shop for meeting a multitude of urgent needs, including dental care for the whole family.
“There’s nothing worse than seeing children come in with bags under their eyes because tooth pain kept them from sleeping,” Pedersen said. “I expect to see kids like that at the clinic, but after they’re treated, I also expect to see those same children come back for regular checkups.”
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The People’s Resource Center Dental Clinic will be open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday beginning the week of May 20. To make an appointment (proof of income and residency are required), call 708-690-7450 or 708-682-3844. Donations are appreciated.
