Healthy Mouth Movement®

What do you get when you combine a 42-foot long bright blue dental office on wheels, a world-famous NASCAR driver, more than 7,000 volunteers, and a whole lot of compassion and generosity?

A very successful community giving initiative entitled the Healthy Mouth Movement (HMM). Since 2014, nearly 11,500 patients have received free dental care through the HMM, that has spanned more than 34 states and resulted in nearly $6.3 million dollars in free dental care and oral health education to people in need thanks to the generosity of dentists and team members from Aspen Dental practices across the U.S.

What you may not know is that many people who want a healthy mouth struggle to find oral health care when they need it, due to access to dentists nearby, cost, or lack of insurance. Those barriers kept more than 155 million American adults from visiting a dentist in the past year – that is just over half the adult population in the U.S.!

The Healthy Mouth Movement delivers care in two ways. The Aspen Dental MouthMobile, a fully-equipped dental office on wheels, goes directly into communities where care isn’t readily available to provide free services in partnership with local non-profit organizations. In addition, every year hundreds of Aspen Dental practices open their doors on a select Saturday to provide a free day of care.

It’s an initiative that was launched with the support of the most celebrated female racecar driver of all time, Danica Patrick, who has lent her considerable celebrity to help turn up the volume on the conversation about the often-overlooked issue of oral health.

In its inaugural year, the HMM served close to 3,000 patients with the involvement of nearly 2,000 Aspen Dental volunteers. Many of those patients were veterans, a patient population that resonated deeply with the Aspen Dental volunteers because veterans do not receive dental care benefits through the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs unless they are 100% disabled or have a service-related injury to their mouths.

In 2015, to further strengthen its commitment to veterans, Aspen Dental partnered with Got Your 6, a collaborative campaign that works to empower veterans and strengthen communities nationwide by uniting veterans’ organizations and engaging civilians to bridge the civilian-military divide. Got Your 6 – meaning “I got your back”– focuses on six key pillars of veteran reintegration, including leadership, health, and education.

Aspen Dental dentists and team members share in this same belief, and have helped shine a spotlight on an important issue, thereby truly making a difference in the lives of many veterans. It’s a commitment that will continue in 2016, as Aspen Dental focuses once again on empowering veterans with a healthy smile.