While students still roam the halls of East High School in downtown Columbus, Ohio, college students and volunteers from across the Midwest begin laying tarps on the gym floor Friday morning.
After covering the shiny wooden panels with blue tarp and tape, students and volunteers assembled 40 tents, with ventilation and a dental chair in each one. The gym is transformed into the dental floor, one of three services that Remote Area Medical provides to those in need.
For over two days, Remote Area Medical and Columbus Clinic Host Group provided free dental, vision and medical care to over 500 patients at East High School, assisted by students, volunteers and providers from Ohio State, Case Western Reserve University and other dental schools in the region.
To Thu Nguyen, a graduate of Vanderbilt and a core-in training for Remote Area Medical, these clinics are more than a learning experience.
“The people that I’m around that make me want to stay,” Nguyen said. “The communities that I’ve been immersed in through this experience, I have come to learn a lot about them and their difficulties in affording and accessing medical care.”
Thinking back to her first clinic, spending 12 hours providing general support to providers left Nguyen wanting to continue participating in the work that the nonprofit is doing.
“Everyone at the clinic was there for a very selfless reason and it was just amazing to be around people who cared so much about this cause,” Nguyen said.
Around 120 third- and fourth-year’s at Ohio State served as providers on the dental floor, performing cleanings, fillings, extractions and more.
To Mark Morrison, a clinical assistant professor at the Ohio State College of Dentistry and doctor of dental surgery, these two days are valuable to a dental student’s education.
“Part of their education is hands-on, but part of it is learning how to study, learning how to read, learning how to take information and read scholarly things about procedures,” Morrison said. “We try to teach them to be a well educated person and have a very well rounded background. This leads them to be able to do something like this clinic, where I can actually trust them.”
Morrison said the clinic gives students the space to make educated decisions based on their education.
“This gives them a chance to be a little more independent and then make those thoughts,” Morrison said. “I think that decision making, rather than me saying, ‘Oh, this is how you do it. This is step one, step two.’ They’re able to put their education together and coalesce it and then think with it.”
Morrison said the college prides themselves in finding students who want to give back to the community, just as RAM is doing.
“I think in two years, I will have been a dentist for 50 years,” Morrison said. “And to give it back is a great feeling. Who would want to waste it?”
Giving back to the community isn’t exclusive to dentistry.
Tarini Gowda, a third-year in biology at Ohio State, said she loves that they go to more remote areas and give back to the community where they don’t have enough resources and medical accessibility.
“Just to see them come in and wait overnight and get the help that they need,” Gowda said. “It just makes my day better, honestly.”
In its mission to eliminate barriers to medical care, RAM also provides interpreters to patients.
Christopher Hansen, a graduate of Vanderbilt and volunteer for RAM, is no stranger to the clinic, but it’s his first time providing interpretation support. Hansen said there’s a demand for French interpretation because of the Senegalese population in Columbus.
Despite learning French since middle school, Hansen said it’s a new challenge because of all the medical vocabulary.
“Luckily, most of the words are the same, just with a little French accent,” Hansen said.
Hansen said he wants to be a rural care provider.
“I do want to work in rural communities and do public health assessments and things like that,” Hansen said. “So this was just kind of a perfect mission niche for me to do something like this.”
Hansen’s passion for serving rural populations aligns closely with the tangible impact the work at RAM provides.
“Even though the care that we do here is extremely just basic essentials, I think it is an indispensable, social resource for the community,” Hansen said.
