Increasing access to dental care

Cosmetic Vessel To reach his goal of collecting 10,000 aluminum cans by the end of the school year, Rigby Wall keeps his eyes peeled to the ground.And sometimes up a tree."One time I found a can in a tree, and there were two inch worms and a spider bigger than a wolf spider in it," said Rigby, a third-grader at Cannons Elementary School. "So I dropped a big rock on it."Under the direction of conservation-minded art teacher Doris Turner, more than 100 students at Cannons have been picking up cans off the roads, from the trash bins and out of the occasional tree in the school's collective quest to make the earth and cleaner and greener place."Ms. Turner encouraged them to clean up the earth," said Susie Wall, Rigby's grandmother and a Cannons recycling volunteer. "Rigby loves to get outside, and he wanted to do what Ms. Turner wants them to do. Last fall, his goal was collecting 2,000 cans. Then it was 5,000. Now it's 10,000."As of mid-April, Rigby was just 1,700 cans shy of that goal, and collectively, the entire school had scooped up more than 25,000 cans.Rigby's efforts have not gone unnoticed by his classmates, either."When I see Rigby picking up cans and bringing them in, I think I can do that, too, and help the earth," said Leah Foster, 9, who's collected about 2,400 cans.As an incentive, students collecting at least 100 cans receive a recycled teddy bear. Turner finds teddy bears at yard sales, flea markets, etc. and cleans them up, sews them up or does whatever needs to be done to make them almost as good as new. Because the Earthcare Project at Cannons has been so successful, she is constantly in need of teddy bears to give her students. (To donate a teddy bear, call Cannons Elementary at 579-8020.) By the way, Rigby has 11 bears. When he reached the 5,000 mark, Rigby won an ice cream party for him and his classmates. He has also been nominated for the Kohl's Outstanding Youth Volunteer Award, which includes a $10,000 scholarship.Can-collecting students who reach the teddy bear level are featured on the in-house TV news program on Thursdays, as well as a special bulletin board recognizing their efforts.The recycled cans have netted the school about $750 this year, and the most of the money goes to maintain the Earth Quilt Garden and to purchase energy-saving light bulbs. The light bulbs are presented to families who, at the beginning of the school year, pledged "to take plastics, paper and other recyclables to the Recycle Center."Turner has expanded the Earthcare Project to include the collection of plastic bottles, and the school has collected more than 7,000 of them. Rigby has brought in about 2,200 bottles. This is a good time of year to find empty soda bottles strewn among the bleachers at local little league games, Rigby said.Both Rigby and Leah collect the tabs off the cans they collect. Susie Wall figures he's collected about 25 pounds of tabs, which were taken to a local kidney dialysis office and now to the local Ronald McDonald House.And both of them enlist the help of family and friends to increase their tallies."Rigby's got everyone in the family involved. People from church bring him bags of cans on Sundays," Susie Wall said. "There's not a day that goes by that he's not collecting cans."Besides avoiding the critters that sometimes take up residence in the discarded cans, picking up cans can be a dirty job. But Leah has one trick to make it more pleasant."When we find beer cans, we spray air freshener on them," she said. Buzz up!The first time the now 12-year-old from Knoxville went to the dentist, "he bit the guy pretty bad," said his dad, Jody Hegwood.But that's not the main problem in finding Josh dental care. Josh has Williams Syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that causes medical and developmental conditions, including mild to moderate mental retardation or learning difficulties, a distinctive facial appearance and heart or blood vessel problems.He had open heart surgery when he was only 1 year old, Jody Hegwood said."(Josh) has a hard time getting a regular dentist to see him because of his heart condition," his father said.So the Hegwoods bring Josh to the University of Iowa Center for Disabilities and Development for his dental care through a statewide program called Dental Care for Persons with Disabilities. The program, started in 1983, is administered by the Department of Pediatric Dentistry at the UI College of Dentistry, the UI Center for Disabilities and Development and the Iowa Department of Public Health.Since its inception -- it was started by Dr. Arthur Nowak, a former pediatric dentistry professor at the University of Iowa -- the program has served more than 3,000 children and young adults."It's a program to meet the needs of families who would fall through the cracks," said Gayle Gilbaugh, program associate and Cosmetic Vessel in pediatric dentistry. Gilbaugh also works in the dental clinic in the University of Iowa Center for Disabilities and Development.Participant requirements are that the person needs to be an Iowa resident younger than 21 from a low-income family. The program defines low income as those who are at 200 percent of the federal poverty guideline or less. That means for a family of four, they would earn less than $40,000 a year.Gilbaugh said there are some families who participate in the program where both parents are employed, even some who receive medical insurance but no dental insurance.