March 30, 2012

Another Dental Friday


As you all know, I help to manage the dental clinic for Health Care for the Homeless.  One of the biggest issues many of our clients face is that dental insurance is extremely hard to come by and many dental services, even emergency ones, are extremely expensive.  While our clinic offers free care for people without insurance and who qualify as homeless, we are only able to service a small number of patients because our clinic is only open once a week.  As a result many clients have to wait weeks to see the dentist, even in an emergency.  

Recently I came across a NPR article that looked at why more and more dental patients were showing up in ERs (something that is definitely not a foreign concept for many of the people we work with).  According to a recent Pew Center study, more than 800,000 visits to the ER in 2009 were for toothaches and other dental ailments.  I learned that in tough times when programs need to be cut, dental under state's insurance plans is typically the first to go.  As a result people are not able to access care and instead of visiting a dentist/oral surgeon for lasting relief, they go to ERs which will only offer temporary help.  

Some are talking about creating a position in the dental field similar to a nurse practitioner.  These dental therapists would be able to perform both preventative and restorative care, and help decrease the burden that dentists face.  The American Dental Association, who agrees that there is a dental crisis, is opposed to the idea of creating these midlevel practitioner positions.  It is interesting to note that Minnesota and some Alaskan reservations already use these practitioners to fill the void in their communities. 



March 29, 2012

Seed Catalogs

One of the things that I TRULY miss about DC is the Smithsonian and that all of their museums are free.  As everyone is prepping their gardens this spring for the upcoming harvest I came across the trade catalogue collection which is housed in the Smithsonian Institution Libraries.  The collection has seed and nursery catalogues dating all the way back to 1830.  As stated on their home page,
"seed trade catalogs document the history of the seed and agricultural implement business in the United States, as well as provide a history of botany and plant research such as the introduction of plant varieties into the United States.  Additionally, the seed trade catalogs are a window into the history of graphic arts in advertising, and a social history, through the text and illustrations, showing changing fashions in flowers and vegetables."
While the collection does not travel, you can set up a time to see portions of the collection in person.





March 28, 2012

Vaccine Hunters

Vaccines can be cheap, easy to use and save millions of lives. They are one of the most powerful weapons the world has against disease.  We look at the big challenges facing the vaccine industry – making effective, affordable vaccines and getting them to the most remote places on the planet. As one leading expert puts it:
“Coca-cola and cigarettes can get there. I think vaccines should be able to as well”.