Team Smile is a charitable foundation started in the Mid Western States in the early 2000s. The premise is to put together sports teams, dentists, hygienists and dental student professionals together to help treat needy children’s oral health needs. Who doesn’t love sports and team spirit?! This is the second time that Team Smile has come back to Boston. Last August 2018 was the “ inaugural” event at Fenway Park to great success. Tufts Dental was asked first by Colgate Palmolive to fill the student spots. =
Dr. Melissa Ing reflects: “I led the Tufts team with the help of Colgate Palmolive. Students eagerly volunteered to help with taking of radiographs and also assisting with preventive sealant placement. This past Friday May 3rd, Team Smile returned to Fenway Park. We had students and a good number of faculty volunteer. Faculty were involved with triage/screening, children activity services, preventive and restorative dentistry. Students assisted the faculty with restorative dentistry. They had a record number of children come to be treated. The first group of kids were kindergarten through Grade 1. The second group were middle graders. In all, 300 kids were treated for preventive and restorative needs!
It was a pleasure grouping and leading our faculty and students for this event again and I hope that we can make this a yearly event where our students and faculty can work side by side to do volunteer work right in our city of Boston. Team Smile was very grateful for our services. I asked that they include our students in the documentary video that they were filming.
As Winston Churchill said: “We make a living by what we get , but we make a life by what we give.” We all had a great time feeling the spirit of giving back is what makes what we do so important to our career! “
