New America Media, News Report, Anna Challet, Posted: Jan 21, 2013
Children face dentist shortage despite new Medi-Cal and ACA coverage
Over half of California’s children will soon have access to dental care because of the Affordable Care Act. The problem, according to a recent report, is that not enough dentists are willing to treat them.
“In Alturas, none of the dentists take Medi-Cal,” says resident Christa Perry, whose 4-year-old son Alexander has a cavity. Alturas, tucked into the northeastern corner of California, is a city of close to three thousand. In late October of last year, Perry took Alexander to a dentist in Canby, twenty miles away.
“His tooth hurt so badly that he was crying, and they told me we needed to leave – because he was crying,” she says. The office directed her to a dental practice in Susanville, a hundred miles away.
Perry, who runs a daycare in her home, had to miss work to drive her son to the appointment. She was also concerned about gas money. Alexander’s appointment was for 2:00; at 4:00, he still hadn’t been seen. Perry’s younger child, an infant, was crying, and the dentist, who was working on another patient, seemed frustrated about listening to the baby. Sometime after 4:00, Perry and her children left.
She was eventually able to find a third dentist who took Medi-Cal, but that office had to cancel her appointment the day before due to an emergency. It would have been another long drive and by then it was winter; Perry was concerned about her older car being safe to drive on the snowy roads throughout Modoc County.
In 2006, over 25 youth began participating in weekly after-school writing workshops where they congregated in the hallway of a two-story building in West Fresno and learned the essentials of creating media and telling their stories. The group evolved over the next five years and is now proudly recognized as The kNOw Youth Media.
Through our program, we create opportunities for our youth participants, who in turn create long-term positive change in their communities. Our approach weaves youth development and youth media innovation to produce our biannual youth publication, multimedia projects, and community forums.
The kNOw began as a project of New America Media, which was the country’s first and largest national collaboration and advocate of 2000 ethnic news organizations. In 2018 The kNOw became a project of Youth Leadership Institute.
