Christopher Davis hasn’t always enjoyed the benefits of quality dental care. “I never really had a regular dentist — I grew up in a really poor family, and dental care just wasn’t one of our priorities,” says Davis, now a single parent raising two children in Wilkes County, N.C. So Davis was pleased when he heard about a dental clinic for children operated by Wilkes Regional Medical Center and offering services for patients eligible for Medi-caid. Until the clinic opened in 1999 with assistance from The Duke Endowment, only one dentist in the county accepted Medicaid patients, and 80 percent of local physicians referred patients outside the county for dental care. His daughter Ashley and son Logan began receiving regular care at the clinic. “It was great,” Davis says. “The staff are real good to them down there, and the children don’t even mind going to the dentist.” By 2004, the rapidly growing clinic had three full-time dentists seeing an average of 50 patients a day. But while the clinic had significantly improved access to dental care for children and was seeing a limited number of adults, it had reached its capacity, and no other dentists in Wilkes or surrounding counties would accept adults with Medicaid. The previous year the hospital emergency room treated 350 adults suffering from acute pain and infection resulting from lack of dental care. Then a second Endowment grant allowed the clinic to expand its service to accept more adults, and Davis was among the first enrolled. “I had bad teeth in front and needed a partial plate” as well as regular care, Davis says. Thanks to the expanded clinic, he got it. The care he received “gave me a lot of confidence, and took away a lot of anguish,” Davis says. “It’s super affordable, and you can’t beat it for the service you get. “It’s just a wonderful program.” | 
