Free Dental Clinic Celebrates 2 Years, Seeks Volunteers

DANVILLE, CA — Dentistry is often thought of as separate from medicine. What goes on in the mouth has little to do with the health of the body attached to it.

The exact opposite is true, says Shab Farzaneh, an Alamo resident who is the founder and director of Dentists on Wheels, Contra Costa County’s only free dental clinic.

“An infection in your mouth can lead to an infection in your heart, and you could be dying from it,” she said. “That’s something I think the general population doesn’t relate to: how the mouth can impact your overall health. What you put in your mouth impacts your entire body.”

That’s a major part of the mission driving the clinic. With the help of dental director, Dr. Neda Ormochian, the clinic has provided roughly $850,000 worth of dentistry, and roughly 2000 procedures, for free in the two years since it was founded. The free clinic, which operates two days a week out of St. Vincent de Paul of Contra Costa County in Pittsburg, offers qualifying patients everything a regular dentist office does, including specialty work such as oral surgery and endodontist services .

But that comes with high costs, and a waitlist of about 420 patients. As Dentists on Wheels celebrates its two-year anniversary, they are looking to expand in all sorts of ways. They’re hoping to be open more often, especially on Saturdays; to add a larger and more consistent base of volunteer dental professionals and office staff; but overhead and per-patient equipment costs will increase with more patients.

More than anything, Ms. Farzaneh says she is looking for volunteers, especially bilingual ones, willing to make a long-term commitment. “We’ve done everything with volunteers, and for us to exist, we need more of them. If they’re not able to, maybe you could talk to your dentist and see if they want to be involved,” she said. “If you’re building an organization that’s wanting to grow and stabilize and formalize, you need some of that structure to create continuity.”

Dentists on Wheels has come a long way since its beginning, when it was literally on wheels. Farzaneh got into philanthropy about a decade ago, when she started the Northern California chapter of Operation Smile, which provides free cleft lip and palate surgeries to children in developing countries.

Though she traveled the world with Operation Smile, she also began turning her focus closer to home. She and her husband created care packages for the unhoused in San Francisco, but they began noticing that many of them had only one or two teeth. Her husband, Danville oral surgeon Kian Farzaneh, explained that it’s roughly five times cheaper to extract teeth than to restore them.

“They’ll take the $70 extraction in a sliding-scale clinic, but they’re not gonna do the $350 cavity fill, or a root canal could be thousands,” Ms. Farzaneh said. That’s how she got the idea to start a free, full-service dental clinic. In 2019, she started a free clinic in an RV for people who can’t afford dental care.

During the pandemic, social distancing concerns led them to partner with St. Vincent de Paul, a church-based organization that already had a free medical clinic and was looking to start a dental clinic. St. Vincent de Paul donated some space, and architect Karl Shultz did pro-bono design. St. Vincent de Paul also raised the capital for more construction. About $600,000 worth of equipment was gathered and donated.

In the fall of 2021, they began seeing the scores of patients who applied. Two major populations include the elderly, who already lack teeth and often subsist on a sugary, liquid diet that can cause diabetes. The second major group consists of single parents who don’t have the money for any kind of dentist.

Ms. Farzaneh told the story of a 27-year-old single father in excruciating pain, who would’ve had his teeth extracted at a young age if he’d gone to a sliding scale clinic.

To help better serve the expanding needs of patients like him, Dentists on Wheels is hosting an anniversary celebration this Sunday from 2-5 at the Alamo Women’s Club at 1401 Danville Boulevard. Guests will enjoy a wine tasting, art show, food, dessert and prizes. Contra Costa County Supervisor Candace Andersen will present awards to the volunteer dentists who have helped out.

For more information or to get involved, visit dentistsonwheels.org or email childrensmileca@gmail.com.