Women in Dentistry - Blog

By: Dr. Sanjukta Mohanta

We all care about the patients we see.

But what about the people we don’t see? The people who want to see us, but can’t because they can’t afford to see us.

It’s those people who Dr. Amanda Morel thought about when she started the charity, Filling the Gap Dental Outreach. This is a charity that helps people in Toronto, Ontario, Canada by offering low-cost urgent dental care at 2 locations using volunteer dentists and dental hygienists.

It was Amanda’s brother, a dentist in England, who gave her the idea of helping those in need when he asked if Canada had a similar program to the National Health Services (NHS) in England. The NHS provides low-cost dental care as an option for anyone who can’t afford private dentistry. Amanda looked into public dental support programs in Canada and realized that many people who need dental care and can’t afford it do not qualify for public dental programs. There is a gap in dental care and Amanda wants to fill it.

Amanda’s experience in living around the world and having family members as dentists makes her well suited to lead a dental charity. Amanda was born in England and her mother was a dentist and her father was a civil engineer. His job took the family to Borneo and Singapore for several years. The family returned to England where she completed her dental and periodontics training at University College London. She owned her own periodontics practice in London for several years until her husband’s job moved them and their 2 children to Switzerland. The family then moved to Canada where she was surprised that Canada does not have a similar program to the NHS. That is when she decided to volunteer with the Urban Dental clinic in the east end of Toronto.

This clinic was founded by a coalition including the Canadian Centre for Refugee and Immigrant Health Care (CCRIHC) and consisted of one dental operatory where volunteer dentists could use their skills to help people with a financial barrier to dental care. Amanda joined this team of volunteer dentists and when the organization decided to move to a new location, she took the opportunity to expand the clinic to 3 operatories by building a dental clinic on the second floor of the new building. Henry Schein, a dental supply company, helped by supplying low-cost equipment and sourcing donated dental chairs.

Those 3 operatories now provide cleanings, fillings, and extractions at a low cost to vulnerable residents. What is special about the hygiene operatory is that the dental chair was donated by the husband of a late hygienist who was about to start her own dental hygiene practice, but she was never able to use it as she was diagnosed with a brain tumor and died shortly afterward. One day, a young woman was sitting in the waiting room watching all the volunteers caring for patients. When she was asked why she was there, she said, “That is my mom’s dental chair. I want to see all the people who are being helped because of my mom.”

A lot of people are being helped in that chair and Amanda wanted to help more people in different parts of the city, so with that goal in mind, she set up her own charity, Filling the Gap Dental Outreach. During a conversation with a colleague, the idea arose of using publicly funded dental clinics in the off-hours to provide care for people in need who don’t qualify for public dental programs. Amanda thought it was a brilliant plan to use existing infrastructure to improve the oral health for people who cannot afford it. Filling the Gap is now operating at their second location at the west end of Toronto at Rexdale Community Health Centre’s dental clinic on Saturdays and 2 evenings.

This year, Filling the Gap received a grant from Green Shield Canada to hire a part-time dentist for 1 year to work at both clinic locations, and this has enabled the charity to see more patients who would otherwise have nowhere else to turn.

The charity is truly filling the gap as 1/3 of Canadians do not have dental benefits and 10% live with dental pain.^[1] Oral health is important in self-esteem and employment as highlighted by a 26-year-old man who had treatment by Filling the Gap volunteers. He said, “I needed fillings as I had some large holes on my front teeth and needed to go for a job interview. I had the treatment done at Filling the Gap’s Scarborough location and my job interview went really great as I wasn’t self-conscious about my teeth.”

Amanda hopes Filling the Gap can help even more people by getting more volunteers and funding. Please check out fillingthegap.ca to donate or sign-up to be a volunteer. She hopes other oral health professionals start similar programs in their communities and so we can all fill the gaps in dental care. You can contact Amanda at info@fillingthegap.ca

^[1] Carstairs, C. (2022, July 18). Filling the gaps: Why Canada still needs a public dental health plan despite decades of Medicare. The Conversation. Retrieved August 7, 2022, from https://theconversation.com/filling-the-gaps-why-canada-still-needs-a-public-dental-health-plan-despite-decades-of-medicare-181306