Just in time for the upcoming National Chocolate Covered Cherry Day, New York State Gov. Kathy Hochul announced 30 awards statewide totaling $25 million to expand health clinics and improve access to dental healthcare services for people with developmental disabilities as part of her 2025 State of the State.
Able News was invited to cover the event celebrating the recipient of the largest award amount of $5 Million to NYU College of Dentistry’s project, “Bridging the Gaps of Access, Transition and Workforce: Expansion of the NYU Dentistry Oral Health Center for People with Disabilities,” in a press conference at their Midtown facilities in Manhattan Monday evening.
“Healthcare is still out of reach for so many people. Access to quality healthcare, for sure, access to any healthcare. That too, not because people don’t need it, not because people aren’t looking for it, but because the systems aren’t designed for people with disabilities in mind. Too often people encounter environments that aren’t physically accessible or providers who don’t know how to meet people’s disability specific needs or settings that are simply unwelcoming,” said New York State Office for People with Developmental Disabilities (OPWDD) Commissioner Willow Baer, whose office aided in prioritizing awards based on projects related to dental care expansion, improving spaces to better accommodate wheelchairs, sensory-sensitive neurodiverse patients, and improving access to specialty physical health services in ‘healthcare deserts.’
This grant will help the project include elements to reduce anxiety and specialized dental equipment to meet the needs of patients with autism and other developmental disabilities, the governor’s press release said in the middle of Autism Acceptance Month.
Luisa Henriquez is one of those parents who immediately noticed the change in her son, Liam’s behavior, when she finally brought him to the NYU Dentistry Oral Health Center for People with Disabilities for treatment. “After a previous traumatic experience, Liam wouldn’t open his mouth for any dentist. When we came to NYU, my plan was for Liam to be sedated because I truly believed there was no other way,” Henriquez said. An NYU doctor was able to build enough trust with her autistic son, who now opens his mouth comfortably every time he comes in. “I feel good,” Liam told Able News, showing off his smile.
Robert Glickman, NYU’s associate dean for clinical affairs and hospital relations, professor and chair of the Department of Oral Surgery, said: “Here in the center, we’ve created a place where patients and their families know they belong—a true dental home and for many of our patients, especially children with intellectual and developmental disabilities, these services are the difference between getting care and as we’ve just heard, not getting care at all.” Oral health, unlike many conditions, doesn’t wax and wane, doesn’t come and go. It declines and without care, moves in one direction,” said NYU’s associate dean for clinical affairs and hospital relations, professor and chair of the Department of Oral Surgery, Robert Glickman, addressing the system that is out of reach for so many people with disabilities. “ But what stays with me most isn’t the cost. It’s the human experience. It’s the child overwhelmed in an environment that doesn’t understand them. It’s the parent trying to advocate in the system that feels fragmented, and it’s the recognition that too often we ask patients to adapt to us rather than building systems that are designed for them.”
In New York City, nearly a million people are living with a disability, including more than 67,000 children. People with disabilities face many obstacles to receiving dental care, including a lack of accessible offices and finding a dentist trained to treat patients with physical or behavioral issues.
To address these gaps, in 2019, NYU Dentistry opened the Oral Health Center for People with Disabilities—an 8,000-square-foot treatment center dedicated to providing comprehensive care for patients. The center was created by the Herman Robert Fox Dean of NYU Dentistry, Charles Bertolami, after he was waiting for a bus on 25th Street and saw a young, 17-year-old man being wheeled out the back door of the dental school in a wheelchair, and his head taped to the headrest. “ I had such mixed feelings – ’cause I thought it’s the compassion and the confidence of our faculty that brought him here,” he said. “But on the other hand, we could do much better because they had no real facilities dedicated to people with disabilities.”
The investment will allow NYU Dentistry to grow one floor up with eight new treatment rooms, enabling them to increase dental services for New York City and the surrounding areas to more than 3,300 pediatric patients with disabilities per year, while also continuing to form a system that eases the transitions from childhood to adulthood care and train students, residents, and teams in caring for patients with disabilities across the lifespan. “Because this cannot remain the exception. It must become the standard as we move forward. I don’t think of this as simply growing a program. I think of it as closing a gap, a gap in access, a gap in education, a gap in how care is delivered, and at times, a gap in how patients are treated with dignity and compassion,” said Glickman.
Slated to be completed in 2027, funding for the renovations of NYU Dentistry’s 9th floor and overall dentistry improvements for people with developmental disabilities came after New York State Chief Disability Officer Kim Hill Ridley had a difficult conversation with a father who was awaiting a cavity filling appointment for his autistic son four years in Syracuse. Over a quick email exchange with the Director of Oral Health Advocacy and Policy Initiatives at the NYU College of Dentistry, Barbie Vartanian, Ridley said she was able to get the family treated within a week in Rochester.
Among the other 29 oral health awardees receiving up to $565,647 in financing are:
- University of Rochester’s “Smiles Without Barriers”
- Cerebral Palsy Association of Rochester dba CP Rochester’s “Improved Accessibility for CP Rochester’s Family Dental Center”
- The Rochester School of the Holy Childhood’s “Article 16 Clinical Office Upgrade”
- Mozaic Chapter, NYSARC, Inc. dba Mozaic’s “Article 16 Clinic Expansion in Rural, Inclusive Community Center”
Dr. Serena Simone is one of the doctors who experienced the early stages of NYU College of Dentistry as a student and a pediatric resident before officially joining the team three and a half years ago, with a specialty in developmental medicine.
“It’s human, it’s humanity. We should be treating and caring for all individuals. On a personal level, I find that the disability community is the most important community to invest in because they create the fabric of our entire society and what our society’s gonna look like moving forward, and how we view what differences look like and how we treat differences. Everybody, whether they’re directly in the disability community or not, has differences. And so if we start to treat people in like the medical model or an ableist mindset, we’re also excluding a lot of people,” she said about the importance of NYU putting a focus on developmental disabilities.
She was the one who made Liam feel safe enough to operate in her sensory and behavioral adaptive care clinic. “He taught me that building skills in the dental environment, simple skills like sensory skills, skills like opening your mouth or being able to tolerate treatments, trickle into your ability and access to other things that affect quality of life,” the NYU dentist told Able News.
In Liam’s case, a tooth replacement was the foundation for his speech, she said.
“The smiles are bigger, you know, and also the lack of fear of being themselves. Stimming is not a thing that needs to be dampened. No, we can stim in there. We could stim however we’d like and be able to support them. Um, their smiles are brighter. I see the empowerment,” ended Dr. Simone with watery eyes.