Over 76 million Americans don’t have dental insurance. That means almost 25% of the population—1 out of 4 Americans—don’t have affordable access to dental care. When it comes to eyeglasses, it’s even worse. Only 1 out of 2 Americans have vision insurance but over 70% of Americans are using vision correction.
Sure, you don’t have to have insurance to get care, you can just pay for the dental or vision services you receive. Which is what most people without insurance do. But except for the small percentage of this uninsured group that is wealthy enough to “pay as you go,” a dental emergency for most means choosing between going to the dentist, or rent.
Which is why when Life and Health Network put on a free dental and vision clinic in Woodland, CA on July 10, there were many grateful people standing in line to receive free services. Over 175 people were served by 80 volunteers on that Sunday. Ten dental stations were going throughout the day and two vision lanes served the vision patients. Dental services offered were cleanings, fillings and extractions. Vision services were a free examination and then free frames and lenses. Patients chose the frames they liked and then it was sent away where a lab will make the lenses and send them back to the patient by mail.
Woodland Seventh-day Adventist church was the site of this event. It’s the first of at least 10 clinics that Life and Health will put on together with the Northern California Conference of Seventh-day Adventists (NCC), a Christian denomination with 145 churches and over 40,000 members within the conference area that includes Sacramento and San Francisco. The NCC has sponsored these clinics financially and Life and Health will put on these clinics along with volunteers.
Dr. John Adams, DDS, is a dentist working full-time in the Sacramento area. He says he loves to volunteer at these events because while it is true that it’s on a day off, instead of getting tired, he gets re-energized by the joy of helping others. He says he can see the people are very appreciative and some even get emotional. Dr. Adams spent the day handling all the hard extractions, including Martha, who needed to get all of her lower teeth removed (more than half were already gone) in order to get lower dentures from MediCal. It would have cost her thousands since MediCal won’t pay for the removal of teeth, just the dentures.
Beautiful Minds, a mental health clinic located in Auburn, CA sent a team to provide stress tests, counseling and free lectures on anxiety and depression.
This is not the first time Life and Health has done free dental clinics. Back in 2013, Life and Health joined forces with Adventist Medical Evangelism Network (AMEN) and started free dental/vision/medical clinics for AMEN. Life and Health together with AMEN did over 60 free clinics from 2013-2017 all across the USA and even internationally (Thailand, Greece and Samoa). It’s been a few years, but it was good to be able to put on a clinic again.
Check back at this website for future clinic dates and locations. You can also signup as a volunteer at our volunteer signup page. Along with dentists and optometrists, we also need nurses, doctors and non-medical volunteers. There’s something for everyone who wants to volunteer.
Life and Health will have their next clinic Sunday, September 11, 2022 at the Beacon Light Seventh-day Adventist church in Richmond, CA (in the San Francisco Bay area).
