Students in the Honors College at The University of Alabama recently brought a mobile dental van and health fair to Marion.
The event was planned by sophomore chemistry majors Isabelle Brooks, Emily Rodenberg and Landry Clark, members of the Dr. Robert E. Witt University Fellows Program in the Honor’s College of UA’s Barefield College of Arts and Sciences.
Before coming up with the idea of a mobile dentist, the three then-freshmen met with Sowing Seeds of Hope, a local community health non-profit, which told them that many Marion residents need dental care.
The group partnered with Miles of Smiles, a Bessemer-based nonprofit which supplied the dental van.
“This project taught us how to make a big project with minimal resources,” Rodenberg said. “We had to raise a lot of money to fund the van, and we ended up raising just under $4,000 while also collecting almost 4,000 dental supplies for the community.”
The project was supported by dental practices in Tuscaloosa County with support from Sowing Seeds of Hope, dental professionals, and faculty advisors and volunteers from the McCollough Institute for Pre-Medical Scholars Program.
Brooks, who is a McCollough Scholar, said the program helped her develop the mindset to tackle a project like this.
“In McCollough, I feel like when we’re learning about some of the problems that we face in modern medicine that encourages us to see a need and ask, ‘What can I do to address that need?’” Brooks said. “We really translated that into finding the need in Marion and figuring out how we can make an impact.”
Clark said, “Rather than assuming what Marion needed, we were able to work alongside our community partners, build on the strengths already present and learn how to best respond to needs identified by the community leaders in a meaningful way. This experience taught me the importance of listening to and learning from community members, as well as recognizing the strengths, resources and relationships that already exist within the community.”
The three sophomores are planning to bring the mobile dental van back to Marion this fall and spring, and in the future, maybe turn their service project into a nonprofit.
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