HJAR Jan/Feb 2022

44 JAN / FEB 2022 I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF ARKANSAS RURAL HEALTH COLUMN RURAL HEALTH FILLINGANEED an Arkansas Dentist Returns Home to Expand His Practice Where Oral Healthcare is Rare GILES WILLIS JR., DDS, failed in his first attempt to extract a tooth — it was a rot- ten baby tooth in his own mouth. The pain had become so intense that Giles did what any 8-year-old boy in a small town with- out a dentist would do: he rubbed Orajel on the sore spot and tried to twist it out with tweezers. With dental school and two decades of dentistry behind him, Willis knew that childhood cavities in rural Arkansas were inevitable. Candy was plentiful (he credits the Penny Candy Lady), but money, tooth brushes and dentists weren’t. That was in the 1970s. The Willis fam- ily lived in Lewisville (population 1,653), a suburb of Stamps (population 2,448), where the only dentist in Lafayette County had set up shop. The day afterWillis’self-extraction failed, his parents traveled to Stamps, 6 miles east on U.S. 82, so that Patrick Moseley, DDS, could tend to him. Moseley found a few problems — he pulled a baby tooth and a permanent tooth, and he filled a cavity in another permanent tooth. The immediate relief from the toothache that had bedeviled him was a life-defining moment for the youngWillis. He wasn’t sure how he would act on his experience, but he wanted to do something so that no other kids had to suffer as he had. Education, he knew, was the key. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the Univer- sity of Arkansas at Pine Bluff and graduated from Howard University’s dental school in Washington, D.C. Fifteen years ago, Willis opened a practice in rural North Carolina. But he and his wife dreamed of returning to Arkansas. In 2019, an opportunity arrived. The den- tal office in Stamps where Mosely had pulled Willis’ tooth was for sale. On the dayWillis’ mother told him that, he bought the building, which hadn’t been used except for storage for 20 years. In 2020, Willis began the restoration, and his familymoved toArkansas inAugust 2021. In December, he took in his first patients. Willis is one of hundreds of dentists in Arkansas who provide dental care for the underserved. The need is evident, as seen in studies and surveys by the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture Cooperative Extension Service, the Arkan- sas Department of Health and the federal Health Resources and ServicesAdministra- tion, among many. Forty-one percent of Arkansas’ 3 million residents live in a rural county, compared to 14% of the U.S. population. The challenge of finding healthcare, including oral healthcare, is greater in rural communities. Most rural county regions are labeled as Dental Health Professional ShortageAreas, which means there aren’t enough dentists. In 2019, the ratio of dentists to Arkansans was 42 per 100,000, which was below the national average of 61 per 100,000.