Ben Massell Dental Clinic: Restoring Smiles, Restoring Lives

We had a great time catching up with Keith Kirshner at the state-of-the-art Ben Massell Dental Clinic (BMDC) last month. What a fabulous organization!

BMDC, which operates under the umbrella of Jewish Family & Career Services (JF&CS), is the only clinic in Atlanta providing no-cost comprehensive quality dentistry to low-income metro Atlantans.

BMDC’s mission goes way beyond providing dental care. It focuses on the whole person. And that makes sense, because dental care affects the well-being of the whole person, too. Alleviating dental problems allows clients to sleep better, eat better, have better self-esteem, and have a better chance of finding employment if they need it.

In addition to dentists, BMDC has social workers on staff and coordinates with other health care organizations like Georgia Lions Lighthouse Foundation (vision care) and Mercy Care Services (healthcare) to get clients the help they need even when it falls outside the scope of dentistry.

[…] TechBridge did a tremendous job bringing real-world nonprofit experience to help make our vision a reality.

— Keith Kirshner, Chief Adminstrative Officer, Jewish Family & Career Services

Because BMDC seeks to improve people’s lives across the board, they want to be able to measure their success in a way that goes beyond the number of root canals performed. In short, they need a way to put together data from hundreds of thousands of clients across time to create a more comprehensive image of the impact they’re having on clients’ lives.

We helped BMDC track and measure patient outcomes such as improved oral health, improved speech (pronunciation), improved comfort while eating, and alleviated pain. BMDC will then use the patient data to develop a framework to measure the effectiveness of their programs. The project is currently in the software development phase, and BMDC plans to go live in January 2017.

We loved working with the Ben Massell Dental Clinic to demonstrate how improved oral health can maximize client self-sufficiency and quality of life. These efforts are in support of JF&CS’s mission of making hope and opportunity happen, says Dirictor of Impact Karen Cramer.

JF&CS greatly appreciates that support, says Kirshner. Karen and TechBridge did a tremendous job bringing real-world nonprofit experience to help make our vision a reality.

We salute the Ben Massell Dental Clinic for restoring smiles and saving lives. We are proud to have the opportunity to help them do it. We’re #BetterTogether.

About Our #BetterTogether Campaign

We are proud to have assisted so many organizations on the front lines of social change in our communities — alleviating homelessness, fighting poverty, helping kids do better in school, making sure seniors get proper meals, and so much more.

We created the #BetterTogether campaign so that we can showcase some of the important efforts of the nonprofits and people we’ve worked with. And because social change is a community effort, we also wanted to showcase our generous sponsors, amazing technology partners, tireless volunteers, and staff. Without them, we couldn’t do our work.

We feel that these stories exemplify the transformational work that can happen when organizations and individuals work hard — together — towards a common goal. We hope that hearing these stories is as inspirational to you as it is to us.

Photo by Pawel Czerwinski.