Press Releases
DATE: 8 April 2010
RELEASE NO:10-04
Grace Hill's 'gypsy dentist'
Provider performs pioneering outreach to City’s homeless shelters
Dr. Frances White provides care to a homeless individual at the Salvation Army’s Adult Rehabilitation Center on Forest Park Parkway.
By Gerald Sonnenberg
ST. LOUIS, Mo. -- Dr. Frances White, a dentist with Grace Hill Neighborhood Health Centers (GHNHC) since 1982, is a petite woman with a bright smile and a calming presence, but she is a giant in her patients’ eyes. She is the pioneer of Grace Hill’s Mobile Dental Outreach Program for the Homeless.
She jokingly refers to herself as the “gypsy dentist” since her work takes her to shelters throughout the City of St. Louis.
She began her career at GHNHC after receiving her Doctorate of Dentistry from the Medical College of Virginia. The Massachusetts native went to school on a government scholarship for which she owed four years of service in a health professional shortage area. She came to GHNHC to fulfill her required service and never left.
Though she has worked in Grace Hill’s health centers as a dentist, and as dental director from 1988-1999, the homeless dental program has been, “The best position I’ve served in as it challenges my skills and stretches my imagination,” said Dr. White.
She explained that the program came about when money became available to use for “innovative ways of providing health care to homeless individuals.”
“I came up with the plan. Grace Hill came up with a grant, and I hit the road.”
For the last decade, she has spent about one day each week seeing patients in the Murphy-O’Fallon Health Center dental department, and the rest of the week providing dental care to homeless men. She said she originally treated men in about a dozen local shelters. However, that number decreased as we eventually aligned with the longer-tenured shelters and those with the better show rates.
“The longer programs gave us the opportunity to provide complete treatment programs for patients before they vanished onto the streets,” she said.
Most of Dr. White’s equipment is already set up in specific locations in the three large shelters where she and a dental assistant provide services.
As soon as they arrive, patients are there, ready to be seen. “It’s like having an honor guard meet me the minute I walk in,” she said. “We are surrounded...and not just by people who need something from us. They stop in just to say hello, or to thank us again for the care and treatment we have provided them in the past.”
Though she likes and appreciates the opportunity to work in the Murphy-O’Fallon Health Center, the “appreciation factor” she receives in the shelters is overwhelming. “It is, somehow, humbling.”
“There is a drug counselor at the Salvation Army’s Harbor Light Center who was one of my patients in the early years. He attributes his getting clean, sober and employed to my taking the time to treat him like a valuable human being and not some kind of bum,” said Dr. White.
Dr. White’s family used to worry about her safety when she first started working in the shelters, “But they see how much happier I am than I was before.”
“The GHNHC dental program has always worked very hard to be a place where people come—not because they have no other alternatives, but because they are comfortable with us and confident in us,” she said. “By working out in the community, I feel I am an ambassador for GHNHC, and I enjoy spreading the word about our organization, and the many wonderful services and dedicated staff available to our patients.”
Dr. White uses the Mobile Dental Van to help haul equipment and supplies to each shelter location.
Dr. White cleans the teeth of a patient at the Salvation Army’s Adult Rehabilitation Center.
Grace Hill Health Centers, Inc. is a non-profit organization that has been enabling healthy, productive lives in St. Louis for more than 100 years. GHHC is accredited through the prestigious Joint Commission.
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