Ten years of healthy smiles 2022 is a significant milestone for the Delta Dental of Virginia Foundation. We are celebrating 10 years of improving the oral health of all Virginians through education, program development and community partnerships. As the Foundation continues to look towards the future of improving oral health in the communities we serve, it is helpful to remember where we have been to fully appreciate how far we have come.
GOOD WORK By Polly Raible Executive Summary: An update and community impact report from Delta Dental of Virginia Foundation on its 10th Anniversary.
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One of the Foundation’s most widely recognized benefits is the support of countless safety-net providers who deliver oral health care to underserved communities across the Commonwealth. Since its creation in 2012, the Foundation has contributed more than $6 million to our community partners and made an additional statewide contribution of more than $4 million in 2020 to support Virginians impacted by COVID-19. Although a decade of service has provided the opportunity to fund countless projects through Virginia’s safety-net organizations, there are many that still need help caring for our neighbors who may have found themselves out of work and without insurance. In honor of our 10-year anniversary, the Foundation is adding a second grant cycle in the spring of 2022 to provide an additional grant opportunity for our community partners. From the very beginning, the Foundation has focused on supporting Virginia students. We created the George A. Levicki, D.D.S. Endowed Scholarship at the VCU School of Dentistry that has now provided scholarship funding to 75 students. The Delta Dental Endowed Fund established through a gift to Health Focus has distributed more than $24,000 in scholarship funding to 39 students. And we continue to serve tens-of-thousands of K-5 students through our Smart Smiles oral health curriculum taught inside Virginia’s elementary schools. A thriving community partnership with the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine (VTCSM) that was established in 2012 continues to provide oral health education and thought leadership opportunities to our medical community. The Foundation helped fund one of the first fully integrated medical, oral health curricula with VTCSM. Through this unique partnership, each class of students is given a full week of instruction on oral health and the Foundation sponsors an
