NEW Health welcomes UW School of Dentistry RIDE student
This winter and spring NEW Health welcomes fourth-year DDS candidate, Julia Sciuchetti. The addition of Sciuchetti, a dental extern in the University of Washington School of Dentistry’s ( UWSOD) Regional Initiatives in Dental Education (RIDE) program, will increase the clinic’s capacity to serve more dental patients in the area, while helping train the next generation of rural oral health care providers. Across the state, rural areas have fewer dental providers and as a result, residents have less access to dental care.
With the support of local organizations like NEW Health, RIDE trains dentists to work in communities that need it most.
“Getting more oral healthcare providers into rural and underserved areas is key to improving the overall health of our communities,” says, Dr. Frank Roberts, Director of the UW’s RIDE Program. “Time and time again, we see that the quality of a person’s overall health is strongly connected to the quality of their oral health. And good oral health depends on access to regular care from a trained oral health professional.”
The RIDE program prepares dentists for practice in rural and underserved areas of Washington state, by training a cohort of students in a specially- focused track of the DDS curriculum each year. RIDE students spend their first year of dental school at Eastern Washington University in Spokane, WA, and complete two clinical rotations at Community Health Centers in Central or Eastern Washington. By immersing students in rural and underserved communities, and through extensive clinical training, RIDE equips students to meet the unique challenges of practicing in more remote regions. Since its inception in 2009, over 80 percent of RIDE DDS graduates who are in dental practice have returned to work in rural and underserved communities.
Sciuchetti completed her second-year clinical rotation at NEW Health Lake Spokane Dental in Nine Mile Falls in 2021 and is excited to return to NEW Health at their Colville and Springdale locations for her fivemonth senior dental rotation. She will be providing care under the supervision of NEW Health dentists Drs. Todd Garcia and Jaehee Williamson in Colville and Dr. AnMarie Giddings in Springdale. Sciuchetti is from Spokane, WA and is on track to graduate the UWSOD in June 2024. She is the president of the American Association for Women Dentists (AAWD) club and Vice President of the School of Dentistry Chapter of the Medicine in Motion Club. Sciuchetti is passionate about community health and is planning to care for rural and underserved populations after graduation.
NEW Health Colville Dental opened its doors in 1997 to serve Colville and surrounding communities’ oral health needs. Now with dental clinic locations in four communities, including Colville, Nine Mile Falls, Newport, and Springdale, NEW Health is committed to ensuring that a comprehensive range of high- quality care is available to best meet the health care needs of the people of Ferry, Stevens, and Pend Oreille counties.