UR Medicine's Eastman Institute for Oral Health has unveiled its new SMILEmobile, which will bring oral care services to patients with special needs.
University of Rochester President Joel Seligman cut the ribbon on the new mobile dental unit, SMILEmobile, which unlike its three predecessors, it can be driven to those patients.
He says it will serve older adults, people with developmental disabilities and other medically complex conditions, and it will go where the needs require, as far as Watertown.
"We anticipate as many as 35 hundred visits per year," he said.
Director of the Eastman Institute for Oral Health, Dr. Eli Eliav, says oral health, or dentistry, is the number one unmet health need for patients with special needs.
"Thousands of Rochesterians will receive high quality of care, previously unavailable to them," he said.
The new mobile dental unit is good news for Barbara Burdette, who has had difficulty finding a dentist who would treat her daughter.
"When the dentist came in and said, told me to cancel the appointment, and that he did not take care of people who are developmentally delayed."
Although she eventually got her tooth filled, Burdette says those comments negatively impacted her daughter.
She says the new Smilemobile is a wonderful service for an underserved population.
Local businessman Joe Lobozzo, founder of JML Optical, provided major funding for the Smilemobile project, saying he couldn't think of a better thing for this community.