|
|
 |
Horizon Health Services – Dental Care Comes to Ivor
A grant from the Obici Healthcare Foundation adds a new dimension
- dental care - to the scope of coordinated healthcare offered by
Horizon Health Services in Western Tidewater.
With a difficult economy and the decline of farming, Horizon’s
service area, basically an agricultural region spanning parts of
Sussex, Surry, Southampton and Isle of Wight Counties, faces greater
challenges including affordable and available health care according
to CEO Cheryl Ebersole. Since 1979 Horizon has helped meet the area’s
medical needs but, until the grant, dental care remained only a
part of the agency’s long term strategy.
“There are no dental providers from Windsor to Petersburg,”
Ebersole says, a huge gap in the medical safety net for the area’s
30,000 or so residents.
The grant brought Dr. Gwendolyn Holley to the helm of the new Horizon
Health Services dental clinic at the Ivor Medical Center. The new
dental clinic includes three examining rooms, offices and digital
radiography equipment. Holley, who also has a practice in Virginia
Beach, drives to Ivor happy to be part of the Center’s coordinated
care approach to community health. The challenge of a new dental
clinic and an opportunity to treat and educate the public is appealing,
she says, as is the rural landscape.
A native of Jamaica, Holley completed college and dental school
in the US and practiced in Portsmouth as well as Virginia Beach
– always correlating oral health with general medical well
being. She teaches how diet affects oral health and how the proper
complement or alignment of teeth as well as gum health affects the
colon. She knows that teeth not in proper alignment affect a person’s
skeletal alignment as well as their bite. And that’s just
the beginning.
Good health is dependent, she says, “on a teamwork approach
with all medical providers.”
|
|
|
