Toothsome idea

A lack of dental care in rural North Carolina makes a strong case for training dentists at East Carolina University

Dental care in too many rural areas isn't substandard; it's non-existent. That's a stubborn fact of Tar Heel life which has defied the efforts of state leaders to change it.

A promising approach to extending dental care into rural areas comes from the leaders of the University of North Carolina dental school in Chapel Hill and East Carolina University. That is to build a second dental school at ECU that would heavily recruit students from rural communities. While this investment must compete with other budget priorities, Governor Easley and the General Assembly ought to give the idea thorough consideration.

Dental care ought to be seen as a way to head off medical bills down the road. As the U.S. surgeon general warned several years ago, chronic infections in the mouth have been linked to an epidemic of diabetes, heart disease, stroke and other ailments in this country.

Large numbers of North Carolinians are bedeviled by a couple of those illnesses.

Reducing such suffering -- and the medical costs it brings -- ought to be high on state leaders' to-do list. Infections of the teeth and gums are a prime target for preventive action, and that's a job for dentists.

A big problem is that too many people in this state haven't seen a dentist for years. It's embarrassing for North Carolina to come in 47th in the supply of dentists. It's almost scandalous that four rural eastern counties (Camden, Gates, Hyde and Tyrrell) have no practicing dentists whatsoever.

Such shortages persist in spite of the state's halting efforts to attract dentists from out of state. As The N&O's Jean P. Fisher reports, many of them still find North Carolina's requirements a barrier to practicing here.

The state's poor are further cut off by the fact that three out of every four dentists' refuse to accept Medicaid as payment. That's only a slight improvement since a class-action lawsuit in 2000 prompted the state to increase its payments to dentists by 30 percent.

It's true that a new dental school wouldn't come cheap. The universities' joint plan envisions a $50 million school on ECU's Greenville campus, as well as $30 million worth of student dental clinics in acute shortage areas. Those students, who would be schooled in pediatric and general dentistry, could care for lots of people. The chances that new graduates might stay on would be enhanced by recruiting people who have roots in those areas. ECU's medical school has shown that such a strategy works with doctors.

That track record ought to ease the fears of some dentists that a new dental school would produce a glut of competitors. More important than the profits of a few are badly needed health care and jobs for the poorest parts of North Carolina. Let's hope this plan gets a fair hearing in the next legislative session.