When 26 students from Case Western Reserve University's School of Dental Medicine arrived in the Dominican Republic earlier this month, they turned lawn chairs into makeshift dental chairs and flashlights into overhead lights in a second floor clinic in Guaricano, outside the Republic's capital of Santo Domingo.

Throughout most of the month, local residents from this impoverished area had access to free dental care provided by the Case students and two volunteer dentists.

Once local residents learned the clinic was opened, as many as 150 people lined up each day as early as dawn for one of the 60 coveted openings to receive care from the Case student-run, grassroots mission.

"This is what I liked about the mission work: Doing something that I learned about and was able to help someone who cannot afford dental care," said R. Gannon Rowan, a senior dental student who just made his fourth trip to the Republic.

According to a U.S. Surgeon General's report access to oral health care among the country's urban and rural poor people remains a leading medical problem.

Erik Storheim, a senior dental student who also has been on a Dominican Republic mission, as well as an externship to Alaska last summer, said he saw more patients in one week in the Dominican Republic than he saw in a semester working in the dental school clinic.

"It's a good experience to see real-life situations," said Kevin Speer, who worked last summer for the Indian Health Services in Ketchikan, where the tallest structures in one of Alaska's southern most cities are cruise ships docked in the harbor.

Like Storheim, Speer said he covered his entire junior year requirements in seven days with the patients he helped in the clinic.

Speer's working conditions were different from the Dominican Republic mission in that Native Americans had a modern clinic and new equipment that was less than 5 years old. The Dominican Republic clinic is an empty room atop a free medical clinic that is lit by sunlight, thus the need for flashlights.

Storheim's first stop was Bethel, Alaska, where a clinic with 15 dental chairs served as the regional center in the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta for the needs of some 60,000 people living in 55 villages.

"This experience has made me aware of how many people are in need of dental care and the oral health problems that exist out there," Storheim said.

The dental school's community service projects will continue after graduation from Case.

Return to the online edition of the 1-29-04 Campus News.