Founding Donor Helps Extend Care Year-Round
Posted: January 29, 2007
As part of its ongoing commitment to the dental community, CareCredit, North America’s leading patient payment program, announced its commitment to the GIVE KIDS A SMILE® program. CareCredit will be the Founding Donor of $100,000 to the newly established GIVE KIDS A SMILE® Fund that will support expansion to a year-round access to care initiative. This new initiative would enable dental practices and clinics to apply for financial grants via the American Dental Association Foundation to provide care beyond the February one-day event.
GIVE KIDS A SMILE® is an annual one-day volunteer project to provide free educational, preventive and restorative services to children from low-income families. Observed the first Friday in February, this year’s 5th Anniversary event is on February 2, 2007. More than 2,100 programs are registered to participate, and more than 51,000 volunteers, including more than 14,000 dentists, will care for some 750,000 children. GIVE KIDS A SMILE® is now an annual centerpiece to National Children’s Dental Health Month. A major initiative for the American Dental Association, GIVE KIDS A SMILE® was designed to focus attention on the epidemic of untreated oral disease among disadvantaged children and to influence government and society at large to work with dentistry to craft common sense, market-based solutions to expand access to care for children in need and children with disabilities.
“In 2007, CareCredit will commemorate its 20th anniversary. Over the past two decades it has been CareCredit’s goal to make dentistry more accessible to everyone and we are honored to support the ADA and dentists’ efforts to bring necessary dental care to children through the GIVE KIDS A SMILE® program,” stated Michael J. Testa, president, CareCredit.
“Over the past five years, the ADA's GIVE KIDS A SMILE® has emerged as the largest charitable oral health care program in the country. Now we can build on that success by expanding the program into a year-round access-to-care initiative. CareCredit's generous gift as Founding Donor to the newly established GIVE KIDS A SMILE® fund in the ADA's Foundation will help kick off this expansion and allow us to support worthy GIVE KIDS A SMILE® programs financially. And it's important to note that every penny donated to the fund goes directly to access to care because the ADA absorbs all overhead costs.” added ADA Executive Director, James B. Bramson D.D.S.
For 20 years, CareCredit has been helping patients to get the dentistry they need and want. Today, CareCredit is at work in more than 70,000 practices in North America and is used by over 6 million patients. CareCredit is exclusively selected for their members by most state and national dental associations, including ADA Member AdvantageSM *, AGD, AAOMS, and AAP, and is also recommended by leading practice management consultants.
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