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Age-Friendly Grant Awarded to the Gary and Mary West Senior Dental Center
It is with tremendous pleasure that we would like to announce that the Gary and Mary West Senior Dental Center has been awarded $30,000 from The San Diego Foundation’s Age-Friendly Communities Program! This grant will support our continuous efforts to enhance the lives of older adults in our community by hiring a patient coordinator who will assist us in working closely with our seniors and will monitor and identify their needs.
The Senior Dental Center is designed to overcome financial and transportation obstacles, yet not all patients complete treatment and/or return for their yearly check-up appointment. Having adequate staffing by hiring a patient coordinator to examine data and develop/implement patient outreach strategies will help increase our rates of treatment completion and yearly visits, reducing the increased risk of oral health complications that occur when postponing necessary care.
We are humbled and honored to have been selected and to have been given the opportunity to expand our reach to aging adults in San Diego. Seniors have been historically unable to access oral healthcare due to lack of coverage, financial resources, and transportation barriers. Despite significant advances in oral healthcare, dental disease remains one of the most prevalent yet neglected chronic health conditions in America.
Through their support of age-friendly programs for older adults, The San Diego Foundation has awarded a total of $313,000 in grants to 11 deserving non-profit organizations. These organizations have demonstrated alignment with existing Age-Friendly municipal action plans in San Diego. The Age-Friendly Communities program is made possible by the generous support of donors, including the Del Mar Healthcare Fund and the Diane Johnson Fund at The San Diego Foundation. To learn more about these organizations and how the grants will benefit them, take a look at The San Diego Foundation’s press release.
If you would like to support us in providing affordable oral healthcare to older San Diegans in need, donate today or learn more on how you can be a volunteer.
