2004 Crest/ADHA Award Winners Visit Central Office
Debora Duerr, RDH, and Katherine Vriesema, RDH, felt two kinds of excitement upon being named recipients of the 2004 Crest/ADHA Award for Clinical Dental Hygienists. On one hand, they were both honored to be recognized for their service in the field, but, more importantly, they were pleased to help bring recognition to the underserved communities that they treat.

Duerr works with AIDS Resource Centers of Wisconsin (ARCW), providing preventive oral health care for HIV-positive patients. ARCW sees to the needs of over 1,400 patients, and has grown rapidly as the advances in AIDS therapy have allowed those diagnosed with the disease to live longer, healthier lives. "The majority of patients we provide services for would not have the financial resources to afford dental care if our clinic was not here to assist them," Duerr says. "The patients I work with are very appreciative of the work I do for them. They've told me horror stories about their past dental care."

Duerr was in dental hygiene school at Milwaukee Area Technical College when a faculty member recommended her to ARCW, and the organization recruited her upon graduation. Now after more than four years at ARCW, she's proud of the work she has done helping those living with AIDS. It also provides her an opportunity to educate the public. When people ask her what additional precautions she uses for her patients, Duerr says, she explains the universal precautions she learned in dental hygiene school.

The best reward Duerr receives at work is the "incredibly loving" response she gets from those she treats. She hopes that receiving the Crest/ADHA Award will help spotlight the work done by ARCW, as well as the oral health care needs of people living with AIDS.

Vriesema works for Special Needs Dentistry (SND), a North Carolina group located in Winston-Salem that provides comprehensive oral health care to adults with special needs who have difficulty going to oral health care offices on their own. She says she was initially drawn to special needs patients because of her grandparents. "[They] are both 85 and had a hard time getting out to see the dentist, [so] I started going to their assisted living facility to help take care of them," says Vriesema. That is when she realized that she really wanted to make a career working with patients with special needs, and, she says, SND was a perfect fit.

SND provides mobile oral health care clinics to nursing home and assisted living facilities, group homes, and adult daycare centers. Some patients travel as long as two hours to receive treatment, says Vriesema, which points out the severity of the access-to-care crisis among geriatric populations. "When I found out about this award, I was jumping up and down, I was so excited," she says, explaining that not only does she love her work and her patients, but she also wanted people to know how important the need for geriatric dental care is.

In addition to working full-time at SND, Vriesema is in the process of completing a bachelor's degree in dental hygiene from the University of North Carolina, which she believes will help her in treating patients and allow her the chance to spend time working in oral health care research. She ultimately hopes to earn a master's degree and advance oral health care through research and program development. Already, she has developed the oral hygiene protocol used at all of SND's facilities.

The Crest/ADHA Award is given annually to honor the work and professionalism of dental hygienists who make a difference in the lives of their patients. Along with a commemorative plaque for their achievement, 2004 award recipients received a trip to ADHA's 81st annual session last June in Dallas, where they were honored at opening ceremonies. In addition, each was given a $2,000 cash prize and a trip to Procter & Gamble's headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio, as well as ADHA's headquarters in Chicago.

—Daniel Bond