HJAR Jan/Feb 2022

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF ARKANSAS I  JAN / FEB 2022 45 Jay Grelen Special HJAR Correspondent At the close of 2019, there were 7,032 li- censed oral health professionals in Arkan- sas — 1,328 dentists, 1,645 dental hygienists, and 4,059 dental assistants. Arkansas has 43 free and/or charitable dental clinics in its five public health regions: nine in cen- tral Arkansas; 14 in Northwest Arkansas; six in northeast Arkansas, and seven each in southeast and southwest Arkansas. FourArkansas counties don’t have a den- tist (Cleveland, Nevada, Newton and Prairie), and three counties have only one (Woodruff, Calhoun, Lafayette). A dental school in Arkansas might im- prove dental care in rural communities. “There are enough dentists, but they are not distributed equally,” says Niki Carter, DMD, dental director at Delta Dental of Ar- kansas. “If they ever start a dental school in Arkansas, the students could do rotations in underserved communities.” In 2015, the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences launched a yearlong gen- eral practice dental residency program that includes rotations at UAMS in Emergency Medicine, Otolaryngology and Anesthesia and at Arkansas Children’s. Residents also spend 12 days at the UAMS 12th Street Health and Wellness Center. The Arkansas State Dental Association sponsors its annual Mission of Mercy clinic where 200 dentists tend to 2,000 patients over two days. The 2022 clinic is scheduled for late April in Conway. Dentists inArkansas have been “extraor- dinarily gracious in caring for underserved patients,” says Billy Tarpley, executive di- rector of the dental association. “Fifteen percent of the dentists in Arkansas have a satellite clinic, going to areas that are un- derserved. Those numbers don’t show up on most surveys.” Neither do the emergency extractions. “So often that occurs at a school,” Tarpley says. “A kid’s in horrible pain. Dentists will say, ‘Bring him in the side door.’That never shows up on reports. Dentists are doing it because that’s the right thing to do.” Willis is among hundreds of Arkansas dentists who assist the less fortunate. It’s the particulars of Willis’ path to his profession that set him apart. The national attention came after Shreveport TV reporter Julie Parr told his story. Singer Kelly Clark- son heard about him and invitedWillis, his wife, Kimberly, and their daughter, Eden, to appear on her Christmas television spe- cial. Clarkson surprised the Willises with a check for $100,000. Willis also has received $35,000 in grants from Delta Dental of Ar- kansas along with donations fromhis dental school friends and colleagues. His primary practice, for the moment, is at Markham Family Dentistry in Little Rock. Initially, he will see patients in Stamps on a limited basis every other weekend. He hopes to limit the number of children’s teeth he has to pull by partnering with Benco dental supply company to teach oral hygiene with “Lessons in a Lunch Box.” Willis has gone on two dental missions to Honduras, and he cared for patients af- ter Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, as well as volunteering with North Carolina Mission of Mercy. He’s doing this because of the memory of the scared 5-year-old boy in Honduras who screamed in pain from an abscessed tooth and the girl who rinsed her mouth with a soft drink because water was twice as expensive as the 99-cent, two-liter bottle of soda. He’s returning toArkansas because he re- members the 8-year-old boy in Lewisville who tried to pull his own tooth with Orajel and tweezers. He will be fixing teeth in the same place Moseley fixed his. “It is,”Willis says, “a pretty full circle, and I have found my purpose.” n For 35 years,Jay Grelen roamed the south and west, fromBaton Rouge,Mobile andMyrtle Beach to Den- ver and Oklahoma City,writing and editing at 10 daily newspapers along the way.After 10 years at the Ar- kansas Democrat-Gazette as ametro columnist,city editor and copy editor,Jay left the newspaper racket to pursue other writing projects.Since 2017,Jay has worked as the senior writer for a prominent Southern politician.He is famous for his love for and production of sweet tea.Southern Living crowned him the sweet tea evangelist in its 2000 cookbook; The New York Times published a Rick Bragg story about his sweet tea.Jay and his wife,Sloane, live in centralArkansas. Wililis on a dental mission trip in La Ceiba, Honduras.