OHIO Project overview video transcript

Having proper dental care is going to keep you healthy overall. Access to oral health care still is a major problem here in the state of Ohio. A lot of our patients come with multiple carious lesions in their mouth, missing teeth, lots of teeth that need to come out. One of the biggest barriers is transportation. Certainly, a lot of them are financial and they do not have the funds themselves.

OHIO project stands for Oral Health Improvement through Outreach. It's a program we have at the College of Dentistry to enable fourth year dental students to go out to various sites in Ohio to be able to serve the public. The 40 full days are completed at a variety of sites. So, they will be in one site for four days a week Monday through Thursday. We feel it is so important for them to have various patient care experiences as opposed to one that looks the same day in and day out. At OHIO project the training wheels come off. You're jumping into the fast lane.

So, they could be at a community health center. They could be at a health department. They could be in a private practice. They could be on the Mobile Dental Coach - it is a dental office on wheels. We know that many of these kids have not seen a dentist and they have no means of seeing a dentist. So, we feel like if they cannot go to the dentist well why not take the dentist to them. So, an OHIO project student can expect to be treated like a real doctor. They get more experience doing many different procedures in a shorter amount of time because they're in a dental office that is functioning already and now, they're part of the dental office team. 

Since its beginning in 2003, the OHIO project has provided more than half a million dental procedures for patients with the least resources and the greatest need. When our students graduate, and they become oral health professionals they have much more confidence in their clinical ability because they have just had more of it. The dental students absolutely think that the OHIO project experience as a fourth-year dental student is the best experience they have. The Ohio Project is unparalleled to other schools in the country.