Merilee Dannemann has been a reporter and columnist for the Taos News, Albuquerque Journalist and is now a columnist at her own www.triplespacedagain.com
New Mexico is about to have a school of dentistry. That is potentially very big news.
Meanwhile, New Mexico has done apparently nothing to develop a program that was supposed to provide dental care around the state. The dental therapy program, which was pushed hard by healthcare advocates several years ago, is not happening.
The new dental school is opening in late June and will offer low-cost dental care to the public, provided by advanced students under the supervision of dentists.
The school has come to us by an unusual route.
It is called Touro College of Dental Medicine. It is part of Touro University, a system of non-profit institutions of higher and professional education chartered in 1970, with approximately 19,000 students located on 37 campuses in several states and countries.
The main dental campus is in New York State, where 200 students per class take two years of classroom training. Of those students, 100 will be coming to Albuquerque to complete their training, starting in June.
According to Touro’s news release, “The 70,000-square-foot facility is located in Albuquerque, on the campus of Lovelace Biomedical Research Institute (LBRI). It will include more than 100 dental units offering general dentistry, oral surgery, orthodontics, endodontics, and pediatric care. Patients can expect the same standard of care provided at a general dentist’s office. Treatments will be performed by students under the guidance of experienced faculty and specialists.”
The clinic is accepting appointments starting June 25. Appointments can be booked by phone at (505) 658-8236.
While this is truly good news for New Mexicans, and we should have nothing but optimism about Touro, there is one obvious imperfection. All the appointments will be at that facility in southeast Albuquerque.
The dental therapy program was supposed to have little clinics in small communities around the state.
Dental therapists are professionals with mid-level training who are licensed to perform simple dental procedures. Under law, they must be supervised by a dentist, but the dentist does not have to be present in the building.
Dental therapy programs exist in several other states, notably Alaska, which has a widely scattered indigenous population, who previously had no access to modern dental care. The program emphasizes providing care to rural native Alaskans.
Dental therapy was a major healthcare initiative in New Mexico in the last decade. After several years of effort, the law was passed in 2019. The plan was that these mid-level practitioners would have incentive and community support to set up practices in smaller communities that could not afford a dentist, especially indigenous communities.
I wrote about this in 2015 and 2018. In my 2018 article I noted that New Mexico has especially high rates of dental problems in children. The health care advocates were persuasive that bad teeth could be an underlying condition affecting the ability of children to learn.
After the law was passed, the necessary regulations were developed by the state dental board, but the process seems to have stopped there. The state has dental hygiene programs at several state colleges and at least one private college. But somehow the dental therapy program never got started.
Maybe Touro will fill the need. Touro shows clear awareness that New Mexico needs more dental care. “We anticipate that there will be a significant number of graduates who remain in New Mexico to pursue their dental careers,” said the college’s dean, Dr. Ronnie Myers, DDS, in an earlier press release.
There is no guarantee that these new dentists will be able to make the economics of setting up a new practice work in New Mexico small towns. But we can wish the school well and hope he is right.
Merilee Dannemann’s columns are posted at www.triplespacedagain.com. Comments are invited through the web site.
