New clinic to open to tackle dentist shortage
Jackson County has been chosen as the ideal location for a new dental clinic.
The clinic is being set up as part of a scheme which is trying to combat dentist shortages in the underserved areas of North Carolina.
Targeting rural areas, East Carolina University (ECU) will be setting-up four community service centers in region and it also plans to open North Carolina’s second dental school in 2011.
The scheme intends to place dental faculty members, including senior students and residents, in the centers to give hands-on experience to the trainee dentists and to improve the oral health of the community.
Currently the oral health of residents in North Carolina, and many other states, is poor because of the lack of dental provision available to rural communities.
Four North Carolina counties currently have no dentist at all and 91 of Kansas’s 105 counties currently have a shortage of dentists.
Dr Alec Parker, North Carolina Dental Society’s executive director, said that this scheme was the first of it’s kind nationally and claimed that newly qualified dentists were often reluctant to go into economically-deprived communities as they would also then find it difficult to make ends meet.
Hopefully this new scheme will advance the oral health of poorer communities.
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