The Transformative Power of Dentistry • Shannon Walker
(Doctor of Dental Surgery Candidate, UCSF || CA USA)
“I have many family members who are doctors and nurses — the majority of them female. My aunt Julie, every time I felt sick, would take my temperature, heart rate, and check to see if my lymph nodes were inflamed. I remember going to ballet when I was eight and when one of my friends said she didn’t feel good, I said ‘let me check your lymph nodes!’ I never really saw science so much as a field, but as a way of life with healthcare.
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We had a patient at my family’s dental practice — he was in his mid-50s with debilitating self-consciousness because he’d had bad breath and poorly aligned teeth his whole life. When he first came in he didn’t want to look you in the eye. By the end of a year and a half treatment with us, he was walking in, smiling, making eye contact. He went out and got a new girlfriend, got a promotion — his entire demeanor changed. With dental care, you’re really treating the whole patient. I love that about dentistry. People want to label dentistry as a superficial form of medicine — it’s all cosmetic, it has nothing else to do with your body. But I’ve seen people completely transform, both physically and mentally.
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I work for the nonprofit Bridge to Health. We’ve expanded work from Uganda to Ethiopia, Kenya, and Namibia. We partner with local organizations to create a sustainable, mobile healthcare clinic that reaches rural areas that are often too far away from any infrastructure in the major surrounding cities. We bring the hospital, dental clinic, OBGYN, and pharmacy to rural patients and help increase their health literacy. I consider myself an advocate of oral healthcare for everyone. Healthcare isn’t a privilege, it’s a human right. It should be fought for by those who provide it, for those who need it. We should expect more from our society and constantly set the bar higher. That applies to everyone — Ugandans, the homeless, people who can’t afford insurance and are willing to go the extra week with a sore tooth when they shouldn’t have to. Human rights have no borders. Neither should healthcare.”