The UBC Faculty of Dentistry is supporting vulnerable women and children in British Columbia by providing dental care in the new Elizabeth Fry (EFry) Health Centre. Opening its doors in January 2023, the Centre offers one-stop access to holistic, gender-sensitive, trauma-informed, culturally safe health care.

An open house event was held on May 24 to celebrate a soft opening of the new Centre, where EFry Health Services Society Executive Director Kathy Marchal introduced the organization and spoke about the Centre’s holistic care approach. Attendees were treated to a tour of the facilities as well as a question-and-answer panel that highlighted the importance of the Centre and its approach to longitudinal health care and support services, including kinesiology, mental wellness, team-based primary care and dentistry, all supported by a caring front end team.

Housed in North Surrey and operated by the EFry Health Services Society, the Centre integrates various services, including medical care, mental health support and dental care. The first floor has a 5,800-square-foot dental clinic through which UBC dental and dental hygiene students rotate. They receive educational instruction from UBC Dentistry faculty and provide restorative, preventative and emergency oral health services to EFry clients. In May, UBC Dentistry appointed Dr. Ishtpreet Kaur Mangat, an advocate of holistic approaches to dental services, as a clinical instructor within the dental clinic at the Centre.

“With a focus on team-based, wrap-around service, the EFry Health Centre allows our faculty and students the unique opportunity to experience medical and dental integration, and our research faculty to evaluate the impact on overall health and wellbeing,” says Dr. Leeann Donnelly, UBC Dentistry Director of Community Engagement.

This type of clinical dental space is only possible thanks to generous support from donors and the university. Drs. Ed Yen and Leeann Donnelly received a $200,000 UBC President’s Academic Excellence Award in 2016, augmented by the Faculty, and Sinclair Dental provided a generous gift-in-kind to set up three operatories in the dental clinic. Most recently, GreenShield, Canada’s only national non-profit health and benefits company, donated over $300,000 in funding as part of its commitment to support underserved and equity-seeking Canadians’ access to quality oral health services. The grant funded the hiring and training of community members and a UBC PhD student, Madison Howey, to act as the dental clinic liaison to ensure dental services are fully integrated within the Centre and the community.

“As a non-profit, GreenShield exists to advance health equity in pursuit of our social mission, Better Health For All. We have prioritized expanding access to quality dental care to mitigate physical pain, chronic diseases, and social barriers,” says Mandy Mail, Executive Vice President, Head of Marketing, Communications & GreenShield Cares. “It’s important for us to work with like-minded partners who understand the needs of their communities to ensure we can get the right care to those who need it most. To date, with our partners, GreenShield Cares’ Oral Health program has helped nearly 50,000 underserved and equity-seeking individuals across Canada.”

EFry offers permanent long-term housing and emergency homeless shelter beds, and its programming supports more than 3,000 at-risk women, girls and children. Incorporating dental care into the Centre was critical to offering marginalized women and their families access to one-stop, whole-person care.

“UBC Dentistry has a long history of supporting dental care to those who otherwise could not access it, and we hope this program will be beneficial to everyone involved,” says Andrea Esteves, UBC Dentistry Dean pro tem.

For the past 10 years, EFry and UBC Dentistry have partnered to provide preventive oral health services to women and children at risk, an important part of ensuring a healthy future. The new facility, which provides comprehensive dental care in collaboration with other health and social care professionals, will increase the impact of this partnership.