Buffalo, NY (WBEN) Students from UB's School of Dental Medicine will be providing free dental care for veterans as part of an annual clinic.
UB's Nicole Hinchy says the Dental Smiles on Veterans Program started about 11 years ago because of an increase in the number of veterans that did not have a dental home. "A lot of times it's secondary to being excluded from some services unless you're disabled or for other reasons. So we figured it would be great to give back to our veteran neighbors, and it's been really successful ever since," says Hinchy.
Hinchy says treatment ranges anywhere from spanning from a dental cleaning to an exam. "If there are any simple restorations that need to be done, simple extractions, the whole goal of it is to get people back into the good state of oral health and promote patients to potentially Come back to UB and become patients of ours," notes Hinchy.
Hinchy says registration has closed for today's event, but a similar event is being planned closer to Veterans Day. "We will certainly be reaching out to the local VAs, VFWs to alert the public to when the event will happen again. We will have a phone number that's dedicated to scheduling that appointment. The other resource that people can look out for is on the UB dental site, and you know, we'll, we'll be able to update more frequently on that website," adds Hinchy.
Since 2014, UB’s program has helped numerous veterans by providing more than $700,000 worth of dental work and treated more than 2,000 people.