Smiles Change Lives (SCL),Kansas City, Mo, a nonprofit providing orthodontic treatment forchildren from low-income families, has dropped its program age minimumrequirement from 11 to 10 years of age.
“Our goal is to provide orthodontic treatment to as many children as possible,” says Kelly Toombs,DDS (pictured), an SCL provider and National Board Member. “The typicalage for a child to have their permanent teeth and be ready fortreatment is age 12. However, some children get their permanent teethearlier, so we have lowered our minimum age to 10 in order to include asmany children as we can.”
SCL currently has 900 immediate openings nationwide for patients.Children must be 10 to 18 years old with a family income at or below200% of the Federal Poverty Level.
