... the health of a child.
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Case Western Reserve University’s Dr. James Lalumandier had an idea – he wanted to “reimagine” what dental care for urban children could be. That glimmer of an idea led Dr. Lalumandier to create the Healthy Smiles dental sealant program for Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD) students, a program that has now taken “reimagination” to the next level. One of the Saint Luke’s Foundation’s transformational initiatives, the program is truly transforming the oral health of Cleveland’s schoolchildren.
“The dental sealant program provides children with preventive dental care by applying sealants to their molars before cavities can form,” said Dr. Lalumandier. But equally important, it provides dental students with valuable hands-on patient experience early in their education while teaching them how they can give back to the community.
This is a unique opportunity for dental students to get out into the community and do a little extra as they learn how to relate to children, some of whom may be seeing a dentist for the first time. In these interactions, both the student/patients and the student/dentists come away with a different outlook, Dr. Lalumandier says:
“Some of the (CMSD) kids, after they finish getting the sealants, will stand up and hug the dental student.”
What could have been a scary experience
for kids who’ve never been to the dentist is often made much less so by
understanding dental students.
Giving back in her own community.
One student who knew firsthand about being a kid with limited understanding of going to the dentist is Cleveland native Dr. Lucia Johnson.
“As a little kid I didn’t have my teeth cleaned, I didn’t really understand all this stuff… cavities, getting teeth pulled…,” Johnson remembers.
Nevertheless, her intelligence and drive eventually led her to study dentistry. She worked hard to get into the program at CWRU.
Dr. Lucia Johnson has chosen to remain in the Cleveland area, providing service to her Northeast Ohio neighbors.
“Part of the reason I applied to Case Western was because of the sealant (program), the whole concept of doing something in the community,” says Johnson, who graduated from the Case Western Dental School in 2004 and recently set up her own private practice in Maple Heights.
Johnson credits the program with both reinforcing the importance of daily oral hygiene and providing care to prevent problems for kids down the road.
“With Healthy Smiles, from elementary school, you’re really raising the
‘dental IQ’ of an individual,” says Johnson. “If they didn’t have
the sealants, how much worse could their dental cases have been?
It’s saving a lot of devastation in the population that may not get (regular
dental) treatment.”
As a dental student, Johnson was part of the Healthy Smiles team that took the sealant treatments to the Cleveland schools. She also took the message of good dental health to the community.
“When she was a student, if there was any community outreach…whether
it was going to a church to talk to the parishioners about good oral health…whatever
it was, Lucia would always say yes,” Dr. Lalumandier recalls.
Johnson recalls that providing dental sealants in the Cleveland schools may also have provided a role model for children. A little girl once saw her in her scrubs and thought it was exciting that a woman could be a dentist.
“Even though I was just a student she said, ‘I want to be a dentist just like you,’ ” Johnson recalls.
Today she continues working to inspire kids, to get them to not only think about their teeth, but perhaps to even reimagine their futures. “I try to motivate people to become interested about becoming a dentist. I go into elementary schools and do career days.”
As a dentist, Johnson could have set up a practice anywhere. She chose
to stay in the Cleveland area, in a location where, like the Healthy Smiles
program, she could make a positive difference in people’s lives — in the very community that she's a product of.
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