What is Lifetime Smiles?
Lifetime Smiles is a program that Genesis carries that offers free dental screenings to schools in Southwest Kanas. Screening days usually occur on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays each week. This program provides students with toothbrushes, floss, a screening, and fluoride treatment if permission is granted by their parents before the visit, for free.
Fluoride is important because it defends the teeth against cavities. Fluoride should be applied to your teeth at least every 6 months, but it can be every 3 months.
“Many believe that fluoride is only for kids, but it’s not it’s for everybody,” Vanessa Rosas
Meet Our Staff from the Lifetime Smiles Program
Arlene Arzate is the Lifetime Smiles Coordinator here at Genesis Family Health. Arlene is from Mexico and has been a part of our team for about 2 years now. As the Lifetime Smiles Coordinator, Arlene oversees scheduling days to visit schools for dental screenings. She also makes sure that Fluoride applications get sent out before their visit. Arelene enjoys the kids she gets to meet at the schools and their nurses. Arelene always knew she wanted to do something in the dental field. She started as a dental assistant at Genesis and then became the Lifetime Smiles Coordinator when the job opportunity came up. This was a job that Arelene’s younger self would’ve never guessed she would be doing, but she loves her job now.
Vanessa Rosas is the Dental Hygienist for our Lifetime Smiles Program, and she handles all the dental screenings at the schools. Vanessa is from Garden City, Kansas, and will reach her 5-year mark at Genesis Family Health on February 14th, 2022. Vanessa has always loved dental and now that she has made such a great impact in the field, she wants to share her knowledge with others. She is working on her master's degree at KU Med, so she can eventually become a professor at a university. Vanessa would love to teach dental or even public health and disease prevention. She has always been very passionate about dental, and she thinks that with the pandemic, teaching public health and disease prevention could be a great idea as well.
These two ladies take pride in educating children on how many times to brush, how often to change their toothbrush, and how an unhealthy diet impacts their teeth. The supplies for their visits are provided by a grant from Delta Dental. This grant gives them 10,000 dental goody bags and funds to purchase their goody bags. Arlene and Vanessa cover 20 counties in Southwest Kansas under the Lifetime Smiles program. This brings them to about 20,000 smiles, or kids a year. One reason these two love this program is the sentimental feeling they get knowing that for some kids, this program is the only time someone will talk to them one one-on-one about their oral hygiene. Vanessa says, “One of the sad things about our job is all the tooth decay that we see all across Southwest Kansas.” There are so many children in need of some dental care, but a lot of them do not receive the service they need. Feel free to catch Arlene and Vanessa at some community events, where they will educate others in the community about oral hygiene.