Thursday, April 28, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

TREATING TEENS: Filling a Need

Huntridge Teen Clinic, which provides free or low-cost health care, prepares for renovation and expansion

Dental hygienist Annette Lincicome checks out Rebekah Vasquez's teeth at the Huntridge Teen Clinic. Photo by Gary Thompson. Nurse-practitioner Sophie deJesus-Jinzo handles medical needs of patients at the Huntridge Teen Clinic. Steve Williams, clinic director, shows off one of the examining facility's rooms.

Teenagers who have never had dental care are a regular phenomenon for Las Vegas dental hygienist Annette Lincicome.

No, she doesn't travel with one of those philanthropic medical teams to serve the needy in Third World countries.

She encounters teens who have been deprived of dentistry right here in Las Vegas. They are teens who don't have health insurance. When pain finally brings them to Lincicome's dental chair, many of them need extractions or root canals.

Lincicome is the lead dental professional at the nonprofit Huntridge Teen Clinic, which has been providing free or low-cost health care to adolescents for almost 12 years.

She recalls one first-time patient, an 18-year-old girl, who was "in so much pain that she was eating only yogurt and ramen noodles. She told me she had lost over 10 pounds in the previous month."

At the teen's first visit, Lincicome determined the patient needed 11 teeth pulled, five root canals and fillings for six teeth with cavities. "The patient's mouth was literally killing her," the hygienist says.

"Some of the parents break down in tears, `I knew my child was in pain and didn't know how I was going to pay' " for treatment without dental insurance, says Fran Courtney, Huntridge Teen Clinic board member.

The clinic, 2100 S. Maryland Parkway, was recently "adopted" by the Leadership Las Vegas class of 2005 for a major renovation and expansion. The project will double the clinic's dental program from two to four patient chairs.

Steve Williams, clinic director, estimates the value of the work at $75,000. Leadership Las Vegas is an annual program of the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, intended to mentor potential community leaders. It is a tradition for each Leadership Las Vegas class to take on a community project. This class has recruited people to donate labor, supplies or funds to pay for the expansion.

At first the clinic offered medical services only, for about eight hours a week, says Courtney, who helped plan and launch it in late 1993. Now, the clinic is open 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Mondays through Fridays, offering medical and dental services. Patients must be between 12 and 18 years old at their first visit.

Back in 1993, Courtney was director of clinics and nursing at the Clark County Health District. She suggested providing medical services to needy adolescents, when a committee at Christ Church Episcopal, 2100 S. Maryland Parkway, came looking for a social-service cause.

The church founded the Huntridge Teen Clinic. It is now the clinic's landlord.

The clinic's medical care includes treating minor illnesses, giving sports or camp physicals and immunizations, as well as providing birth control and testing for pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Most services are free, but a sports physical costs $15 and a PAP smear, $5.

During the first half of the present fiscal year, the clinic saw 605 medical patients, some receiving more than one procedure or visiting more than once. Family planning was the most requested service, which includes dispensing birth control and emergency contraceptives. The next most-used services were pregnancy testing, STD testing and PAP tests, in descending order.

Some teens come to the clinic for medical care because their families don't have the money to go elsewhere. But other teens choose Huntridge for confidentiality, since they do not want their parents involved in their personal decisions.

"We will say, `Who can we contact?' and they will say, `Please do not call or mail anything' " to the home address, according to Sophie deJesus-Jinzo, the clinic's nurse-practitioner. Many teens supply their own cell phone number as the party for the clinic to contact.

Education is a component of all services, says DeJesus-Jinzo. Many teens are surprised to learn, for example, that some birth-control products do not prevent sexually transmitted disease.

The clinic added dental care in 1998. Lincicome, the hygienist, has special authorization to do triage and to apply tooth sealants, which are tasks a dentist normally performs. The charge is $10 per visit.

For fillings, root canals and extractions, she routes her teen patients to the current 35 dentists and oral surgeons who volunteer for the program. Some donate their hours at the Huntridge Teen Clinic, others have Huntridge patients come to their private offices.

In the first half of this fiscal year, the dental clinic saw 234 patients. The count is lower than for medical patients because most dental procedures are more complex and time-consuming than the typical teen's medical needs.

"We're running 20 percent ahead of last year," Williams says of the clinic's total caseload.

Rebekah Vasquez, 14, an eighth-grader at Johnson Middle School, has been attending the dental clinic for almost three years. She has had root canals, fillings and extractions done for her.

"She needed work done, and I couldn't afford it," explains Rebekah's mom, Sylvia. Her husband is a self-employed landscaper. The family doesn't have dental insurance.

Williams hopes that once Leadership Las Vegas' expansion of the Huntridge Teen Clinic is complete, he will be able to again approach the University of Nevada, Las Vegas' dental school to inquire about dental students' volunteering at the site. A previous discussion did not result in a cooperative arrangement, perhaps because the clinic did not have enough dental chairs at the time.