It was another week full of many different opportunities! As always, a lot of my time is spent on outreach; feeling myself become more confident in my abilities to get our information across to different groups is an exciting thing. I have discovered that being flexible in how we run outreach visits is essential to making sure the groups are really understanding what we are saying. When we work with larger groups, it is easy to set up stations and have the kids go where they want. However, many of the sites we visit like to split the kids up by age – this can be really helpful to us because we are able to change how we approach our presentation to ensure all of the kids can understand. We also visit summer lunch programs, which has never been the same! This week, I interacted with maybe 3 of the 15 children that decided to get lunch that day. When this happens, I still try to make sure that everyone gets a goody bag even if they do not want to play my games. I figure that at least getting our information to them, as well as giving them a new toothbrush, is better than nothing!

I also had a very interesting conversation with my supervisor about the growing number of Amish patients we are seeing; many Amish people have dentures at a very young age, and the lack of dental care can stem from cultural differences or lack of knowledge. While some areas with a high Amish population have safety net dental clinics, many do not; it will be interesting to see where our brainstorming takes us. Even visiting some sites that are far away once a year may be helpful for the dental health of people in need.

Yesterday, I got to be involved in a lunch about an upcoming Team Smiles lunch with a possible donor. Team Smiles is an organization that partners with professional sports teams, and since the Columbus Blue Jackets are already heavily involved with us, we are looking to be involved in the event in September. It was a great opportunity to be involved in the conversation about pros and cons of the event and funding the event. It also showed me that different perspectives are important, and we gained a lot of information we had not thought about before.

In the upcoming weeks, I am looking forward to continuing with marketing and social media, and looking into trying to contact Central Ohio School Nurses to get our information into schools. I am excited to keep getting our name out there so more kids can benefit from our services. I am also excited to continue looking into grant opportunities; researching this is helping me understand the grant process more.