THE KINDERSMILE FOUNDATION
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Mission Statement
KinderSmile Foundation envisions a future where every child has access to a dentist and dental disease is eradicated. Our mission is to provide underserved children with access to comprehensive dental care and educate children and their families on the importance of dental hygiene.
About This Cause
Our 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization was founded in 2007 by a New Jersey dentist, Nicole McGrath DDS, FACD, who witnessed too many children needlessly suffer from preventable pain & shame of dental disease. She began delivering free dental exams, cleanings and fluoride treatments for cavity prevention at local schools, along with other volunteer dentists & hygienists. With the help of fellow children advocates and KinderSmile Foundation Board of Trustees, Dr. Nicole has vastly expanded the charity effort to educate kids & caregivers, prevent cavities and intervene with high-quality dental care, and opened KinderSmile Community Oral Health Center in Bloomfield, NJ in 2016. This welcoming clinic is a "dental home" where 2,500+ at risk children & perinatal women receive comprehensive oral health services each year. The team has grown to include volunteers & staff of all ages and professional abilities, and we partner with more than 35 schools, child care centers and family agencies "giving kids a dental head start in our community." Over the past decade, KinderSmile Foundation has provided more than $2.6 Million of in-kind dental services and impacted over 13,000 low-income families in NJ and six developing nations, in order to eliminate the #1 epidemic of economically disadvantaged children—dental disease. Here are our three primary programs. 1) KinderSmile Oral Health Program (KSOHP): KinderSmile Foundation was founded with the values of Education, Intervention and Prevention as methods to combat oral health care inequity. KSOHP exemplifies these values by combining powerful community outreach with dedicated in-kind dental services to bring free dental exams, prophylaxis, fluoride treatments and sealants to children in Head Start/Early Head Start programs, elementary schools, child-care centers and health fairs. Not only do uninsured, Medicaid and NJ FamilyCare participants receive free diagnostic/preventative care, they are also educated about dental hygiene through various interactive methods that we have developed on our own. Further, KSOHP stresses the importance of linking children to a Dental Home by age 1, and works with various local networks to help make this link for those families most at risk of not receiving dental treatment. The opening of KinderSmile Community Oral Health Center (KSCOHC) in August 2016 represented a dramatic expansion of our ability to provide free dental care to the constituents of Essex County who need it the most, and of our ability to provide age-appropriate oral health education for underserved children 0-17 years old. This Dental Home also provides continuity of care for the uninsured children we treat at our annual Give Kids A Smile oral health fair. February 3rd, 2017 marked our 10th annual Give Kids A Smile event, and we look forward to launching a pilot initiative in February 2018 whereby we extend free Give Kids A Smile services for an entire week, rather than just one day. Target Population Served: Uninsured, Medicaid and NJ FamilyCare patients from birth through age 17 living in Essex County and surrounding neighborhoods. Top 3 towns we serve are Bloomfield, Newark and East Orange. Approximately 2,000 children served annually. 2) KinderSmile Perinatal Health & Wellness Program (PHWP): When low-income pregnant women receive NJ State Medicaid benefits on a temporary basis, the covered benefits are only pregnancy/labor/delivery related. Oral health care is not included as part of pregnancy-related services despite the proven link between dental health and overall well-being. An uninsured pregnant woman who cannot afford to pay for her dental care and has to endure the pain and suffering of untreated dental infections during her pregnancy or beyond her postpartum status is more likely to delay prevention and early intervention for herself and her young infant. This creates an environment of unhealthy habits that will afflict the whole family. We launched PHWP in June 2016, in order to break the dangerous cycle of untreated dental diseases passed from generation to generation and to improve local rates of linking children to a dental home by age 1. We empower perinatal women with informative, personal, culturally sensitive training about the importance of maternal-oral health and its impact on the developing fetus and infants/toddlers under the mother’s care. Participants who complete the required oral health curriculum become ambassadors of healthy habits to their communities, and they are eligible to receive all recommended follow-up dental care at KSCOHC, free of charge. In addition, all of their children from birth through 17 years are linked to KSCOHC for continuous access to a Dental Home. From June 2016 through August 2017, seventy-seven (77) women participated in the program and continue to be treated, along with their children, at KSCOHC. Target Population Served: Uninsured women who are pregnant or postpartum up to 3 years, in commuting distance of our Dental Home in Bloomfield, NJ. A majority of participants are Spanish-speaking immigrants with newborns; most travel via public transportation from Newark. Approximately 75 mothers to be served annually. 3) KinderSmile Community Service Learning Program (CSLP): Our nonprofit would never be able to execute its full suite of programs without the dedication of many volunteers—both dental professionals and students. CSLP focuses on the volunteer experience of students from high school through graduate school, and many of our volunteers/interns pursue dental school and/or public health degrees due to the life-changing experience of the program. Not only do volunteers shadow our dentists/hygienists to learn more about the craft of dentistry, they also have the opportunity to learn all aspects of operating a nonprofit organization, inspiring several to launch their own charitable efforts since "graduating" from the program. The penultimate experience of our CSLP volunteers is their annual mission trip to a developing country to bring free oral health care and oral health education to orphanages/schools where children are in abhorrent health situations. Volunteers engage in fundraising to make their service trip a reality and then spend a week working “on the ground” in the country of choice, accompanied by dental professionals who will provide comprehensive dental treatment to families in need. In June 2017, fifteen (15) CSLP and clinical volunteers travelled to Guatemala to serve 207 children of Casa de Sion, valued at $73,285 total in-kind dental services. Target Population Served: International orphans/impoverished children of developing nations and their chaperones, including Guatemala, Grenada, Trinidad & Tobago, Jamaica, Haiti, etc.