“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” At the UW School of Dentistry, these words from Margaret Mead embody the heart of what one small group aims to accomplish.

The UW Oral Health Collaborative (OHC), a community-service branch within the school, is run by a group of seven to eight people, including dental professors, students and even a lawyer. Created in 1997, the collaborative was started as a vehicle for oral-health outreach and education as a part of the Dental Hygiene Program.

It is now involved in various events throughout Washington state that provide free oral-health lessons and screenings for underserved people within the community.

Norma Wells, a professor in dental public health sciences who has been interested in community service and education since the ’60s, came up with the idea of OHC on her own — even if she’s too modest to admit it.

“Well, I can’t say I really started it,” Wells said. “No, really. The Dental Hygiene Program has always done service as an educational outreach sort of thing. But, in the ’60s there was a lot of activity around the UW campus because of the civil-rights movement, so I tried to see what my students were interested in doing as community work in my community-health class.”

From that moment on, Wells recognized the philanthropic nature of her students and the UW’s medical programs as a whole. Through her classes and various community requests for oral-health education, Wells began a small but powerful movement within the UW medical community that ultimately led to the creation of the OHC.

“The word that comes up over and over again is collaboration,” said Pat Brown, the coordinator of the group. “That’s what this is all about. We are here to collaborate with other medical groups to bring the most holistic medical education and help to people within the community.”

Brown, like her colleagues, doesn’t believe their small numbers are necessarily an inconvenience.

“Of course, we would love more volunteers,” she said. “But, the collaborative is an anomaly. Our small numbers help us get things done. We never waste a crisis or fritter away ambiguity because it’s all very useful. … It’s just like that Margaret Mead quote; we’re small, but we get it done.”

With state funding as financial support and oral-health awareness beginning to gain attention in the state Legislature, the group has been able to become involved in many forms of community service.

Most recently, the OHC was invited to be a part of the Third Annual Community Resource Exchange at Qwest Plaza April 8. The event acted as a one-day, one-stop service center for people who were homeless. They screened people for priority of need and completed initial patient records for those referred to their stations.

“We were totally slammed from beginning to end of the resource exchange,” said Brown in regards to the event. “This is normal because homeless people typically have little or no access to oral-health care and have elevated levels of need. In fact, oral-health care has proved to be the most requested service at events of this kind throughout the state.”

In an attempt to reach and serve as many different groups of people throughout the community, the OHC also has created various programs within their group to specifically focus on different types of audiences, such as the Tooth Fairy Academy for the younger groups that they visit.

The Tooth Fairy Academy was an outgrowth of the OHC’s early outreach and education activities. At health fairs and other special events, members of the OHC would dress up as tooth fairies and educate children about oral health.

To help solidify this practice, OHC members provided the training, costumes and supplies for local tooth fairies who were then able to provide basic oral-health education to Head Start classes, summer school programs, local health fairs, parades and other events in their own communities.

To the OHC, the basic dental services are only the first step in accomplishing their goals. It is the lasting education and awareness that they strive to provide.

“The most important component of this is really the education,” Wells said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s families with their kids, whether it’s homeless people, whoever; we’re in the field of prevention. We’re known, as a profession, for just doing cleanings. That’s the problem, and this is our opportunity to tie in what we know to people in the community to educate them and help prevent future oral-health problems.”

Also, the OHC provides an outlet for dental students to incorporate their education with first-hand, real-world experience as they begin carving their path to future work in the dentistry field.

“Unless you get out of hygiene school and get into public health, you don’t really access public health,” said Theresa Marks, who is pursuing her master’s degree in oral biology while being a member of the OHC. “That’s why it’s so great to have a strong public-health facilitator at this school. This threw me back into the public-health sector and is giving me the opportunity to put my education straight to use in the community.”

Above all other benefits of working with the OHC, the members stress the satisfaction of spreading awareness of a health issue that has never been fully exposed.

“The mouth is a snapshot of the body,” Brown said. “There are only two kinds of people who understand that: the lofty specialists and the people who have gone without oral-health care. People never seem to understand the importance of oral health before it’s too late, and we are here trying to make sure that doesn’t happen anymore.”

Reach copy chief Parisa Sadrzadeh at features@dailyuw.com.