Ronald McDonald Care Mobile
Did You Know...
- More than 51 million hours of schooling are lost annually due to the lack of dental care among American children.
- In Arkansas, 27% of our children have untreated dental decay.
- 57% of Arkansas' children have some kind of dental cavity experience.
- Tooth decay is the most common chronic childhood disease today in the United States, five times more common than asthma.
These numbers don't have to be this high. In fact, we don't want them to exist at all, so we created Arkansas' first Ronald McDonald Care Mobile. Through a relationship with Ronald McDonald House Charities of Arkansas, Arkansas Children's Hospital and Delta Dental of Arkansas, the Ronald McDonald Care Mobile provides free dental care and educational services to underserved children in their own neighborhoods - to help eliminate statistics like these.
The Ronald McDonald Care Mobile is a 40-foot, state of the art, fully equipped dental clinic on wheels. With a team consisting of a dentist, dental hygienist and assistants, the Care Mobile will travel to select elementary schools and summer programs in Pulaski, Saline, Perry, Faulkner, Lonoke, Jefferson and Grant Counties. The Care Mobile will stay at each school for about two weeks to treat as many students as possible that desperately need dental care. Many of these children have never seen a dentist before and their parents do not have insurance to be able to provide the appropriate dental care their children need. The Ronald McDonald Care Mobile will help make significant progress in treating these children and the critical dental problems found within Arkansas.
The Care Mobile will offer full service dental care including exams, x-rays, sealants, restorations (fillings), pediatric crowns, pulpotomies (baby tooth root canals), extractions and other preventative and restorative care. Eighteen schools have already been selected for a visit based on the highest number of students on the free lunch program and the highest number of children whose families do not have access to dental care. With help from school nurses, we target second graders in order to start preventative care as early as possible, and then treat children of any age who are identified as being in pain. Approximately 1,000 children will receive treatment each year.
Arkansas is proud to have the world's 36th Ronald McDonald Care Mobile. An initial grant from Ronald McDonald House Charities Global helped with start up expenditures with our three partners sponsoring a percentage of all remaining and future costs of the program.
We couldn't be more excited at Ronald McDonald House Charities of Arkansas. The Care Mobile not only fits in perfectly with our mission, but it's just the right thing to do. We found a need in Arkansas and we are working to provide a smart solution for these problems.
