Knoxville nonprofit expands free dental care with LMU dental school partnership

KNOXVILLE, Tenn — A Knoxville nonprofit that’s been serving the community with free dental care for decades is now expanding, with the change even helping future dentists. 

Volunteer Ministry Center, or VMC’s Dental Clinic, has been providing services like fillings, extractions and cleanings since 1998 to individuals experiencing homelessness and low-income residents of Knox County.

The dental clinic has been a lifeline for people who otherwise wouldn’t have access to care. Now, a partnership with Lincoln Memorial University, dental students are opening the clinic an extra day and giving them real-world experience.

“The partnership with LMU is really brand new, and we’re really excited about it. We have just started, really just a few weeks ago, with bringing LMU students into our dental clinic, and what it’s allowed us to do is offer services for another day a week, so we are able to expand and serve more people,” said Gabrielle Cline, the chief clinical services and operations officer at VMC.

On Mondays, a contracted dentist comes out to serve people without a home. On Fridays, volunteer dentists come in to serve low-income people or people without homes. The LMU dental students now rotate through the clinic on certain Tuesdays. 

“They don’t come every Tuesday because they’re in a rotational block. So they come for three Tuesdays, and then there is a day where they are back at LMU, and then we get another set of students,” Cline said.

For LMU, this partnership aligns directly with the school’s mission of helping those in need.

“A big part of the mission of Lincoln Memorial University College of Dental Medicine is to serve the underserved in eastern Tennessee and in Appalachia. Lincoln Memorial University is based in Harrogate, a rural area. One of the big reasons that it was founded was to care for underserved populations and rural populations in this area,” Wayne Cottam, the director of the clinic and community-based clinical education program at LMU, said. 

Cottam said this gives the students hands-on training while providing care for those in need of dental services. LMU also operates its own reduced-cost dental clinic at its site in north Knoxville.

But for patients, the impact goes beyond medical care. Debrina Penn said being in active addiction kept her out of the dentist’s office. She said through recovery and support services with Serenity Ministries, she found VMC. 

“When I got up from the chair, I felt like this new sense of confidence, so it made me wanna be able to smile more and like be more confident in my smile and feel like I had that extra push. The students that were helping me and the staff, the supervising staff, were very welcoming and let me know that it was gonna be Okay,” Penn said.

Both Cottam and Cline said good oral hygiene is important for overall health.

“There’s a lot of things that occur in the mouth that affect the entire body, but then there’s also the social aspect of it. You need a smile to have a job and those different things. It really sort of affects one’s confidence and self-image to have a good, healthy mouth, and you can, you can eat, you can smile, you can work without being in pain,” said Cottam.

And as for Penn, a healthy smile helped open the door to a new chapter.

“My smile is being able to help other people during their situations; they might be down and out, but a smile can help carry someone along the way,” said Penn.

If you are interested in dental clinic services at VMC, you’re asked to call ahead to make an appointment. You can call (865) 934-1746.