IMOM Working Together to Restore Smiles

The day before Davenport, Iowa’s October IMOM (Iowa Mission of Mercy) event, Kris Van Cleve and her denture team at Dental Prosthetic Services (DPS) began packing up all the equipment and tools they would need for the two-day event. Case pans, model trimmers, pressure pots, waxing tools, polishers and more would be driven 2 hours southeast from Cedar Rapids to Davenport’s River Center that evening. The team arrived in Davenport, spent a restful night close by the River Center, and rose well before sunrise to assemble the dental laboratory station in the large arena filled with more than 100 operatory stations. It is a mission that Van Cleve, her denture department supervisor, Jeanie Wickman, along with the entire denture team, participates in each year.

This year Van Cleve’s team welcomed help from prosthodontist, Dr. Kevin Sloan from Ann Arbor, Michigan, whose state will be holding its first IMOM event in June 2013, Sandy Kotowske, dental technology instructor from nearby Kirkwood Community College, and Ken Shaull, special care coordinator at the University of Iowa College of Dentistry. Kirkwood dental technology students Shawn Jenson, Arial Hodnefield, and Carolyn Schmitt also volunteered their Friday and Saturday to help out the DPS team. The days are long as the team tirelessly fabricated flippers and removable partial dentures to restore function and smiles to many of the nearly 1,400 patients who had arrived from all over Iowa and neighboring states.