Community Smiles is a community-based, fully-accredited, nonprofit dental clinic whose mission is providing oral health education and improving access to dental care for the uninsured, low-income children and families of Miami-Dade County.
Community Smiles has been delivering oral health care to the underserved since 1946 and we’re now the largest community-based dental clinic in the state of Florida – $14.6 million in subsidized care and served over 10,000 patients in 2016. Originally the Dade County Dental Research Clinic, Community Smiles began as a program of the Dade County Public School System, with the mission to provide quality dental care and oral health education to the underserved, while providing post-graduate dental education and training for dental assisting students. Over the past 70+ years the clinic has evolved into a beacon for accessible care to recent immigrants, the homeless, at-risk youth, and other compromised populations. Due to our caring volunteers, multi-lingual staff, and inviting atmosphere, Community Smiles has maintained its niche as the safety-net oral healthcare provider in Miami-Dade County.
“For more than 70 years, Community Smiles has served the greater Miami community,
providing dental services to those with no other access to care.”
Never in that time have the needs of those we serve been as great, or the challenges we face in serving them as large. In 2010, Jackson Memorial Hospital closed its community dental operations and terminated all financial support for the patients it refers to Community Smiles, dealing a major blow to the financial stability of our organization. Even as funding was cut, the backlog of patients without access to dental care mushroomed, exacerbated by economic downturn. Community Smiles was faced with a difficult choice: evolve or perish.
In response, we generated a blueprint to overhaul, modernize and streamline our operations, while redoubling our efforts to raise additional private funds. That blueprint has included full computerization of our operations, a transition to new digital x-ray imaging systems, overhauling sterilization, stocking and delivery of materials and supplies, and putting the right tools in the hands of our talented and dedicated volunteer doctors and residents. A reorganization of our staff structure has consolidated directorship of our Residency Program with management of our Faculty and enabled us to bring aboard a professional Clinic Director and Residency Program Director.
“The results of these efforts have been nothing short of amazing!”
The volume and value of patient care we have provided in the past year has grown significantly, even as the quality of that care has risen. New materials and methods, notably including 3D digital impressioning and on-site milling and fabrication of crowns, have not only energized our volunteers, but made possible a level of service not previously available in our clinic. Wait times for our patients have fallen substantially, and with greater fidelity in our scheduling systems, cancellations and no-shows have fallen. In short, in the face of the greatest adversity in the organization’s proud history, we have not merely survived; we have launched Community Smiles into a new era of accomplishment and service.