(PO-120) Fones School of Dental Hygiene "Senior Smiles" Program

Objectives:
1. Adding basic restorative dental care to the Fones dental hygiene clinic to improve the dental health of Bridgeport's low income senior citizens
2. Improve the quality of life for seniors who are unable to access care
3. Contribute to overall systemic health improvement with restoring function to seniors in need

Methods
Senior Smiles targets low income residents of Bridgeport, CT to address their untreated oral health concerns.

Results
For all treatment, patients required extended chair time so the average length of appointment was 72 hours with an average of 3.37 appointments per patient; up to a maximum of seven appointments. The results found that most patients required much more than originally anticipated; years of dental neglect found most patients needing dentures or partials. Patient demographics include that the patients average age was 74, equal number of males/females with race/ethnicity at White/Caucasian 57.6%, Hispanic 18.2%, African American 15.2% and Asian 9.1%.

Conclusions
Our program has given our seniors a place to go for their dental care where they could trust the proposed treatment plan and the treatment done because we had nothing to gain from doing otherwise. Our program benefits from being associated with the Fones School of Dental Hygiene; a trusted and respected institution for over 100 years. We have been awarded $75,000 for year two of this program and hope to serve a greater amount of patients in need.