Another bridge to health
Penn's Puentes de Salud program has been providing free medical, social and law services to South Philadelphia's Latino community since 2004.
Now Penn's School of Dental Medicine has joined the effort, too.
Joan Gluch, director of community health at Penn Dental, says students and faculty have already begun offering crucial services through Puentes de Salud ("Bridges of Health"). Dental School volunteers are assessing both the dental health knowledge and most pressing dental health needs of the local Latino community. When these assessments are completed, the school will then design a customized dental care program for the community as well. Students and faculty will also continue to emphasize that good dental hygiene is crucial to overall health.
"There are so many connections between what happens in the mouth and what happens in the rest of the body," Gluch explains.
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