Serving Our Smiles: Smiles for Heroes

Health care access

Expand existing project, program, or initiative (expanding and continuing ongoing, successful work)

Despite ongoing efforts to care for veterans, many still lack proper access to dental care. In fact, to receive dental benefits from the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA), individuals must have sustained serious injury or be 100% disabled. This requirement creates a significant gap in dental care access for many veterans who do not meet these requirements but still require dental services. This issue is particularly pressing given the large veteran population. In California alone, there are 1.8 million veterans, and nationwide, there are approximately 16.5 million veterans. Additionally, reintegration programs can often be limiting and not sustainable. By placing veterans in halfway homes without further support or programs to ensure their success into society, they need to be provided workforce opportunities, safe and healthy housing, and healthcare. This is the demographic that many communities have failed.

We serve our heroes by offering free oral check-ups, cleanings and other dental services, ensuring that cost is not a barrier to receiving care. Additionally we tackle workforce development in the dental field by offering educational programs for underserved communities, including single mothers helping them become dental assistants. Dental assistants work alongside dentists and team members in a dental office performing taks such as updating patient records, sterilizing instruments and assisting during procedures. This program provides dental assisting training in six months, allowing students to enter the world of dentistry and engage in a highly sought profession. Each year 30 students complete the program, with all of them receiving an X-ray certificate by the end of the program and being ready to take the Registered Dental Assistant exam. Upon graduation,students are able to start working immediately. ]This dual focus ensures that underserved members of the community can pursue and succeed in new careers, while the trained dental assistants support our mission, sustaining and expanding our services to more veterans in need. This approach not only addresses immediate health needs but also contributes to long-term systemic changes benefiting both veterans and the broader community.

A large pocket of veterans reside in Los Angeles whether by choice or not. SoS wants to make Los Angeles a safe community but cannot due to the amount of homeless and unattended veterans that have settled here. And we have alternative solutions to letting them suffer right in front of us. Our intended impact at SoS is to set our heroes up for success, and therefore, Los Angeles for success as well.

We have a few different metrics we use to measure the success of our programs. Other than satisfaction and referrals, we gather data on Oral Care:
Number of patients seen
Data on procedures provided Data on value of dental care provided Patient satisfaction surveys Number of doctors participated Doctor satisfaction surveys Cost of material and Education: Number of students Survey of student satisfaction Job placement success Students continue in dental field
We use the data collected from one-on-one surveys (especially after seeing us for oral and education support) and tracking software (for current/active patients and students.