Giving Low-Income Youth the Gift of a Healthy Smile

A healthy smile not only provides obvious physical benefits but can boost self-esteem and have a positive life-long impact. On the other hand, orthodontic issues such as misaligned bites, severe crowding, or missing teeth have an unfair (and well-documented) correlation to getting bullied at school, missing out on career opportunities, and various health concerns. The damage to one’s confidence can be permanent.

Future Smiles is all too familiar with these challenges. Working within the nonprofit Children & Family Resource Services (a partner of the Santa Barbara County Education Office), Future Smiles provides low-income Santa Barbara County area youth, who have severe orthodontic needs, with a pathway to braces. 

Jennyffer Rivera, the Oral Health & Future Smiles Program Manager, says the community has witnessed firsthand how life-altering a healthy smile can be. During the height of the pandemic, the staff learned that some students in their community were relieved that they could cover their teeth with face masks. Even when restrictions were lifted, several students continued wearing their masks. She points to one case in which one child was being bullied in school because of her orthodontia issues. “It was hindering her mental and physical health to the point where she attempted to take her own life,” Rivera says. 

Future Smiles was able to step in and offer the child braces – and hope. 

“The parent wrote a letter to us that said, ‘Not only did you save my family, but you saved the life of my daughter, because by her being a recipient and knowing she’s going to look and feel better, her whole personality and her whole perspective on life changed,’” Rivera says. “That case was severe but it’s a reminder that our work at Future Smiles impacts the whole family.”

Future Smiles has served over 1,500 students who have received braces over the past 10 years. Families are case-managed to enroll in Medi-Cal and paired with local philanthropic-minded orthodontists who accept significantly reduced rates for treatment. 

MaryEllen Rehse, the executive director of Children and Family Resource Services at Santa Barbara County Education Office, says that Future Smiles students are part of a special screening process in which the families commit to two years of dental care. “We assess the severity of clinical need for orthodontic treatment, and that families meet low-income qualifications,” Rehse says. It’s worth noting that part of Future Smiles outreach is that every staff member speaks Spanish like much of the community it serves. That’s helped widen its reach to more people in need. 

Rivera also notes that while students once thought braces were only for nerds, the very concept of straightening their teeth has now become much more popular. At Lompoc Valley Middle School, we have students eagerly asking, “When is the screening going to happen?” 

Braces, Rehse has witnessed, are now officially cool.