More than 90 per cent of the children visiting the USC Mobile Clinic are seeing a dentist for the first time. During the past five years, the USC Mobile Clinic has provided sealants and fluoride treatments to an additional 3,000 children attending inner-city schools. Services provided by the USC Mobile Clinic has worked with USC's Department of Pediatric Dentistry to provide oral examinations, X-rays, dental prophylaxes, nutrition counseling, fluoride treatments, sealants, amalgam and composite restorations, stainless steel crowns, polycarbonate anterior crowns, root canal therapy for primary and permanent teeth, extractions and minor oral surgery. The USC Mobile Clinic also provides dental screenings and educational materials to individuals of all ages at health fairs, college campuses, senior citizen centers, convalescent homes and elementary schools. A staff of USC dental school student volunteers operates the USC Mobile Clinic under the supervision of Dr. Randall Niederkohr, faculty director, and Dr. Charles Hsieh, associate director.
Treatment is supervised by volunteer faculty, the faculty director and associate director.
Dental hygiene students offer dental prophies and dental health education. A variety of volunteers, including family members, pre-dental students, and dental assisting students, join USC students and assist them with patient flow, record keeping and sterilization of instruments. The USC Mobile Clinic staff includes Hector and Francisco Garcia, who are responsible for seeing that all vehicles and equipment are in good working order. They also serve as drivers and frequently troubleshoot at clinic sites. Community's Role A representative of the sponsoring organization determines patients' socioeconomic eligibility, and a volunteer dentist or nurse classifies their dental need by degree of urgency.