For two weeks in March, the Delta Dental mobile truck — Molar 2 — will be in Huron to offer free check ups, teeth cleaning and treatment to children ages zero to 21.

Molar 2 will be parked in the shared parking lot at Huron Middle School and the vocational school March 15-19 and March 22-26. Contact any school in the Huron district for an application if you have a child you wish to see a dentist. The application deadline is March 11.

“This really fills a great void for the people that don’t have dental insurance or can’t afford dental care. Otherwise they just don’t get that care,” said Linda Eck, home liaison with the Huron School District.

“We usually have it come once a year, but last March it was canceled because of COVID,” she added.
Delta Dental started its mobile program in South Dakota in 2004, visiting 85 communities across South Dakota and treating more than 45,000 with $25 million in dental care.

Huron joined the program in 2008, and since then the dental bus has served 839 local children with $616,885 administered in dental care.

The current trucks — Molar 1 and Molar 2 — began service in 2017. Each truck is 40-feet long with two dental areas to treat patients. Delta Dental manages, operates and staffs the trucks. Each truck travels across the state an average of 40 weeks, serving about 3,000 kids per year. The mission is to help children who otherwise would have no access to dental care.

“When we first got started the school partnered with Kiwanis to have that first bus come,” said Rita Baszler, school nurse at Madison and Washington schools. “Then we partnered with Kiwanis and United Way when the second bus came.”

Ever since that second visit, the United Way has funded the dental bus each time it has come to Huron.

“It actually takes $26,000 per week to operate the truck, but Delta Dental covers all but $2,500 of that,” Baszler said. “United Way pays $2,500 per week. We have the bus for two weeks right now, and that will be $5,000.”

The dental bus was also in Huron in December. At that time, because of rules in place due to COVID-19, the school district was not allowed to transport children to and from the dental bus location.

“People’s Transit utilized a WISHES grant to pick children up for the dental bus,” Baszler said.

For visits this month, the school district will be back to transporting children from the elementary schools to the dental bus.

“We used People’s Transit in the fall,” Eck said. “They were very gracious to do that otherwise we would have no way to get them there. That’s a real plus for the kids and the moms. The middle and high school kids can just walk across the street to the bus.”

Eck said they send fliers home with students telling parents about the dental bus.

“Delta Dental provides their own dentists,” Eck said. “When I first started coordinating this, Huron dentists would help out, but I don’t see that anymore now. They come with their own dentist, dental hygienists and assistants, and a bus coordinator travels with them also.”

All dental work is completed in the mobile unit, while an area is set up in the vocational building where hygienists clean children’s teeth.

The dental bus begins seeing patients at 8 a.m. with the last visit scheduled no later than 3:30 p.m.

“I guess the biggest job is just targeting the kids who really need to be there,” Eck said. “If anyone knows of anyone, pass the word to them. Our teachers and nurses do a good job of trying to target."

“I like to find kids in the 19, 20, 21 year range that maybe haven’t gotten a job that offers dental insurance,” Eck added. “They’re still welcome to be on the bus through age 21.”

Along with wider and brighter smiles on the faces of students, the dental bus plays a key role in health, Baszler said.

“We don’t often think of cavities or pain in the mouth as causing illness, but it really does,” Baszler said. “The cavities are infection. That causes headaches, causes kids to be tired. We see a lot of different things. We see them eat better, able to function and do their homework or classroom work better, and yeah, we get to see them smile more.”