A new dental school and clinic is slated to bring dozens of dental students to Vermont by 2027, thanks in part to an anticipated multi-million dollar earmark from Congress. Over the ensuing two years, the students would finish their training and begin practicing on patients in a state notoriously lacking in dental practitioners.
At a press conference Friday, representatives of the Vermont State Dental Society, Vermont’s congressional delegation and the University of Detroit Mercy — which is spearheading the new Vermont-based program — celebrated the program’s recent accreditation and its eventual kickoff expected in May 2027.
“It is no secret to anybody in this room that we have a dental crisis in our country, and that we have a dental crisis in Vermont,” U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said at the press conference Friday. “And that is a crisis, by the way … that is too often ignored. We talk about the health care crisis. Guess what? Dental care is health care.”
Students in the program will begin their dental education at the university’s campus in Detroit, Michigan, in the Fall of 2025, then finish their third and fourth years of training at a yet-to-be-finalized location in Colchester beginning in May of 2027, according to Detroit Mercy Dental’s dean, Mert Aksu.
Sanders said each class would comprise 32 students. That means when the program is fully up and running, with both third- and fourth-year students, 64 additional dentists-in-training will be in the program. “That’s a lot of dentists for this state, right?” Sanders quipped.
And while they complete their education, students will begin providing dental care to qualifying Vermont patients at a planned Medicaid public health clinic.
“For us, we struggled with one problem: We had too many applicants for the positions that we could accommodate in Detroit for clinical education,” Aksu said. “We saw many, many very talented, well intended, enthusiastic potential oral health professionals who weren’t given the opportunity to be a dentist, but yet could help solve a problem in a state that really needed it.”
The final “vision” of the program, Aksu added, is that students who complete the program in Vermont “will be so energized, enthused and charged up by their experience here that they’ll want to stay” in the state indefinitely.
With no dental school located anywhere in the state and working Vermont dentists aging out of the workforce, Vermont has a dearth of dental care. Rebecca Ellis, the state director for U.S. Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., said Friday that in 2019, 26% of Vermont’s dentists were aged 60 or older, and nearing retirement.
“Not surprisingly, the top two priorities in the state’s 2022 Vermont Oral Health Plan were, one, to increase access to dental health care for all Vermonters, and two, to expand the dental workforce,” Ellis said. “The Detroit Mercy Vermont program will address both of these priorities.”
Both Welch and Sanders requested $4.6 million in congressionally directed spending, also known as earmarks, this budget cycle to help fund the endeavor. Northeast Delta Dental, a dental insurance company, has also pledged $2 million for the effort, Sanders said on Friday.
With an existing school infrastructure already in place — albeit outside of the state — Aksu said the startup costs are much lower for the Vermont program. To open an entirely new dental school in the state from the ground-up would cost roughly $150 million, he said.
The school is in the process of finalizing a lease agreement for its classroom and clinic space in the greater Burlington area, Aksu told reporters on Friday. A press release issued later Friday said the school and clinic would be located in Colchester.
As for where students and faculty for the program would be housed, Aksu said the university is in talks “with a local higher education institution that has capacity for housing here in the Burlington area … both for the graduate students, as well as faculty who may rotate here.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: New graduate school would bring dozens of dentists-in-training to Vermont by 2027.