WellOne, CareLink join forces

BURRILLVILLE – WellOne, a Pascoag-based community health center, has been awarded $28,879 by the Rhode Island Foundation to buy dental equipment to start a nursing home oral health project in partnership with CareLink Inc.
The grant will support a collaboration with CareLink’s Wisdom Tooth, a mobile dental program for nursing homes, to expand the dental services that are being provided to Medicaid patients in WellOne’s service area, which stretches from the Burrillville village of Pascoag to South Kingstown.
The program employs dentists, dental hygienists and dental assistants who provide diagnostic, preventative and palliative services from oral exams to dental X-rays to cleanings to fillings, and repairs, simple extractions, and denture fittings and repairs.
The new collaboration will not only allow Wisdom Tooth to serve more seniors, but it will also allow it to serve more nursing homes. Services are available to any resident in the nursing home who wishes to apply, and they cost nothing to the facility.
Separately, WellOne has received a $5,000 R.I. Senate Legislative Grant, procured by Sen. J. Michael Lenihan, D-East Greenwich, to buy a Nomad Pro hand-held dental X-ray machine for the health center’s North Kingstown location. The system will expand the X-ray capabilities there and in the nursing home program.
According to the World Health Organization, oral health and overall health are even more tightly connected in the elderly than in the general population, and can affect their nutrition if it compromises their ability to eat. Oral health issues have also been linked to diabetes, heart and lung disease.
“Oral health care is critical to maintaining overall good health at any age,” said WellOne President and CEO Peter J. Bancroft. “The ability to provide the means for this important service to members of the community who otherwise would be unable to do so themselves is a key component of our agency’s commitment to promote wellness and well-being in the patients and towns we serve.”
Established in 1909, WellOne – formerly Northwest Community Health Care and Bayside Family Healthcare – is the oldest nonprofit community health center in Rhode Island. It was the first rural health clinic in the nation, and it has been a pioneer in public health initiatives. To learn more about the center, go to www.welloneri.org.