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Dental charities

Dentaid: The Dental Charity filling in the gaps in dental care

British Dental Journal volume 235, pages 262–263 (2023)Cite this article

Key points

  • Dentaid The Dental Charity is one of the biggest dental charities based in the UK, providing accessible dental care to communities overseas, but also to a growing number of communities in the UK.

  • In the UK, the charity has a fleet of seven mobile dental units and trailers to provide care to vulnerable communities, such as people who experience homelessness, as well as running their BrightBites oral health promotion programme to school children.

  • As oral health inequalities are widening and disproportionately affecting socially excluded groups, the need for the work Dentaid does is rapidly increasing.

Dentaid The Dental Charity was founded in 1996 when an English dentist refurbished a dental surgery in his garage. The equipment was driven across Europe and installed in a Ukrainian prison so a local dentist could treat the prisoners. The charity has come a long way since then, from firstly concentrating on refurbishing equipment and sending this overseas to running volunteering trips in other countries, to projects in the UK, which has grown from one clinic in Dewsbury in 2015, to now what is likely to be almost 500 clinics up and down the country in 2023.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. UK Clinical Director for Dentaid The Dental Charity, Consultant in Special Care Dentistry at King´s College Hospital, United Kingdom

    Natalie Bradley

Authors
  1. Natalie Bradley
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Correspondence to Natalie Bradley.

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Cite this article

Bradley, N. Dentaid: The Dental Charity filling in the gaps in dental care. Br Dent J 235, 262–263 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41415-023-6187-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41415-023-6187-9

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