{"id":267173,"date":"2026-08-17T23:42:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T23:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/267173\/"},"modified":"2026-08-17T23:42:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T23:42:09","slug":"fortis-institute-offers-free-dental-care-to-children-up-to-17-at-give-kids-a-smile-event","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/267173\/","title":{"rendered":"Fortis Institute offers free dental care to children up to 17 at Give Kids A Smile event"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fortis.edu\/campuses\/pennsylvania\/scranton.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Fortis Institute<\/a> in Scranton is helping local children put their best smiles forward.<\/p>\n<p>The school hosted its second Give Kids A Smile event of the year, partnering with the<a href=\"https:\/\/www.adafoundation.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"> American Dental Association Foundation <\/a>to provide free dental care and oral health education. Students also gained hands-on experience by working one-on-one with patients.<\/p>\n<p>More than half of children ages 6 to 8 have had at least one cavity in their baby teeth, while about 11% of children ages 2 to 5 have one or more untreated cavities, according to data from the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>At Fortis Institute, the Give Kids A Smile event provided children up to age 17 with free preventive care, including cleanings, screenings, X-rays, and more.<\/p>\n<p>Dental Assistant Instructor Scott Wagner said the event benefits both local families and Fortis students by gaining hands-on experience.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt&#8217;s really great for kids who don&#8217;t have insurance. They can come in and get a free cleaning. A very thorough cleaning by our hygiene students. Since they are students, it is going to be extremely, extremely thorough and worthy of a little bit of extra time that they&#8217;re putting into it,\u201d said Wagner.<\/p>\n<p>Dental Hygiene student Jaime Occulto said the event is rewarding, giving students a chance to give back while building connections and gaining valuable experience.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt&#8217;s really good to give back to the community as well. What they do for us, we would love to give back. And it&#8217;s a learning process for all of us,\u201d said Occulto.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s sponsored by the American Dental Health Association. So, they sponsor us and let us give back to the community,\u201d said Occulto.<\/p>\n<p>Wagner said the event is another step towards preparing the next generation of dental hygienists.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese are the future hygienists, the ones that will be cleaning our teeth tomorrow, next year, in the next ten years,\u201d said Wagner.<\/p>\n<p>Fortis Institute said 50 to 60 children were scheduled for the event, with more walk-ins expected throughout the day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fortis Institute in Scranton is helping local children put their best smiles forward. The school hosted its second&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":267174,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179],"class_list":["post-267173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/267174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}