Low-income families and the homeless in Montreal have a new option for dental care after McGill University’s Faculty of Dentistry and Montreal homeless shelter Welcome Hall Mission officially opened a permanent clinic Feb. 11.
The clinic provides free basic dental care to those who can’t afford care in a private clinic, according to a university press release.
It will be staffed by McGill dental students and faculty, and housed in Welcome Hall’s facilities.
McGill’s dental school already has several outreach initiatives, including a mobile clinic, low-cost services at the Montreal General Hospital and pediatric dental care at the Montreal Children’s Hospital.
The programs are integrated into the school’s curriculum, with faculty supervising senior students and residents who provide treatment.
Paul Allison, Dean of McGill’s Faculty of Dentistry, said while the mobile clinics are “very good at getting to the places where people are,” the permanent clinic can provide more services to more people.
While the mobile clinic ran 20 sessions a year, the new permanent clinic will be open three days a week. The permanent clinic can also do more complex care, including x-rays, that couldn’t be done at the mobile clinics.
Debbi Marsellos, media relations and events co-ordinator for Welcome Hall, said the partnership was about a year in the making. Marsellos said one of the biggest challenges of the project was money.
Welcome Hall already had the facilities, but they needed to be renovated. The money for the renovation ultimately came from corporations and foundations, while McGill provided the furniture and dental equipment, Marsellos said.
The clinic serves a community that can’t afford dental care in private clinics. However, Marsellos and Allison agree this is not the only barrier patients face to accessing dental care.
“There is a stigma involved, each case is different,” Marsellos said. “Most of the clients have been homeless or part of our food bank.”
One of Allison’s interests is increasing access to dental care. He said there is often a cultural difference between a health-care professional and a person from an underprivileged background.
“Education trains a dentist to be a certain way. They have completely different expectations of life than a person who stopped school at an early age,” Allison said.
In addition to providing care for these populations, outreach programs such as this clinic help to “sensitize our students and residents to these issues, and see it as part of their role to help with that,” Allison said.
Quyen Su, a fourth-year student in McGill’s Faculty of Dentistry, has worked in the new clinic. She said working at the clinic “gives you a different viewpoint when you approach. You’re able to understand the patient’s story a little better.”
Allison said while dentistry isn’t covered by the public health-care system, that doesn’t mean the mouth isn’t important.
“There’s a false dichotomy between dental care and other health care. There are links between the health of the mouth and the health of the rest of the body.”