Doctors Discuss Event that Provides Dental Care to Veterans

Dr. Gene Napoliello, President of Delta Dental of New Jersey Foundation, and Dr. Sam Wakim, Chief Dental officer of Zufall Health, join Steve Adubato to discuss New Jersey's inaugural Missions of Mercy event "Smiles for Our Heroes" which provides dental care to veterans and connects them to continuous oral health resources.

11/4/2017 #3028

 

 

 

 

Excerpt:

"I'm Steve Adubato. And I am honored to welcome two very special medical professionals who are joining us to talk about oral health, dental health, and our veterans. Doctor Gene Napoliello, is President of Delta Dental of New Jersey Foundation, and Doctor Sam Wakim is Chief Dental Officer of Zufall Health. Zufall Health is? It's a community health center based out of Dover, New Jersey, but we have sites all throughout Northern Jersey and Central Jersey and we provide both medical, dental, as well as behavioral health services and a wide range of supportive services to our patients. Right. And doctor help us understand, this the Delta Dental Foundation is? A charitable entity that serves the public and New Jersey. Anybody with a bonafide charitable need can go to any one of a number of clinics statewide, one of which is the Zufall Center. Right. They've been our partners for 25 years, and they've grown with us, and that's what people can do. So let's talk about this Missions of Mercy. What is Missions of Mercy? Well, Mission of Mercy is a national movement. There's a national entity that controls all the Mission of Mercys and works with them. In this case I've been to Connecticut's Mission of Mercy. It's a large mass unit that's in a big arena, it's plumbed, electricity, and hundreds of professionals treating anybody who wants to come. They... these people sleep at night, on line, online, and it wraps around the building. To get dental health? To get dental care, right. And by the way, Dental Delta of New Jersey does in fact support them and have been for the past eight years or so. Who are the people who are coming in for help? What kinds of people are we talking about here? Well up in Connecticut it's everybody. They come from all over. People who don't have insurance, basically. The underinsured and the uninsured. But mostly the uninsured. But they came to New Jersey. When? So this is our first... no but Jersey is going to be the first time we... Jersey's the first? This is the first time we're doing it here and we're going to do it for veterans. We've had an eight year experience with Connecticut. Talk about the veteran's needs. So for the inaugural event, we decided to focus on veterans because veterans, you know, once discharged from service, they do get medical care, but they do not receive dental care unless they have a 100% service-related disability. Sure. So most veterans don't get dental here, and as you know, dental care is important because it's..."