Public Employee Press

School dental centers in danger

By DIANE S. WILLLIAMS

Since childhood Niokka Jackson, 28, has had a dread of dentists she hopes not to pass onto her two young daughters.

Greater still is her fear that Ajenne, 9, and Allure, 6, will no longer have the oral health care safety net offered by the compassionate staff at P.S. 21’s free dental clinic.

“I don’t care what it takes, the mayor just cannot close this clinic,” a teary-eyed Jackson said. Her girls love math and reading and attend P.S. 21 in the Bronx, which houses one of New York City’s 46 school-based dental clinics for children from toddlers to 21-year-olds. But in June the Dept. of Health and Mental Hygiene plans to save $3 million by closing all of the clinics. The program was established 103 years ago to serve the city’s poor and immigrant communities.

As a kindergartener, Allure fell in the schoolyard and broke a front tooth. Dentist Margaret Mahoney and Dental Hygienist Valencia Grant calmed her mother, stopped the bleeding and fixed the tooth. Jackson said, “The staff is the best in the world.”

Young Ajenne hugged Grant before climbing into the dentist chair for a toothache in December. She showed no fear, no panic. Grant held her hand while Dr. Mahoney checked her mouth, and Ajunne never missed a minute of class.

“Dental problems don’t just go away,” explains Dr. Mahoney. Untreated tooth decay can led to infections, bone deformities, headaches, nutrition problems and learning difficulties. Lower-income children suffer twice as much tooth decay as more affluent children.

The city fiscal crisis threatens services for its most vulnerable residents. DOHMH plans to close nine clinics in Manhattan, eight in the Bronx, three in Staten Island, seven in Queens and 19 in Brooklyn and eliminate the jobs of 36 Dental Assistants and eight Hygienists in Local 768 and about a dozen or more administrative clerks in Local 1549.

Closing the clinics will have long-term repercussions in working-class neighborhoods. Most dentists don’t accept Medicaid, parents with Medicaid seldom take their children to dentists and public hospital dental clinics have long waiting lists.

“Many of the students are from countries where water is not fluoridated and preventive dental care is unavailable,” said Grant, a 20-year veteran whose day starts at 7 a.m. “We see parents with missing teeth and serious dental problems, which we can help their children avoid.”

Save the dental clinics
DOHMH’s free clinics are a model among pediatric dental services worldwide. They provide checkups, cleanings, sealants, preventive treatments and more serious dental care to 17,000 children a year. Downsized since 2006, the dentists work only two days a week, seeing about 10 students a day and other patients from the community.

Commissioner Thomas R. Frieden “does nothing to publicize the free in-school dental clinics,” said Local 768 President Fitz Reid. Although DC 37 and the Doctors Council have offered to publicize the program, DOHMH is not interested. “This program is the stepchild of the city’s health care system,” said Local 768 chapter Chair Dale Brooks.

The closings come just as New York State has mandated parents to provide dental exams for schoolchildren. Many parents work long hours at jobs without insurance and cannot afford time off for children’s dentist visits. Parents may enroll in low-cost insurance programs like Child Health Plus for dental services, Brooks said, “but with four children, low-cost quickly becomes expensive.”

“In a city like New York there is no reason for poor or no dental services,” said Dr. Mahoney.

For Hygienists Brooks and Grant, whose workspace is filled with photos of smiling students she’s treated, it’s a bitter end to a long, meaningful career. “My heart and my life are here,” she said as she helped another student into Dr. Mahoney’s chair.