Good Shepherd Merges with Crossings Community Clinic

By: Jeanie Bath, DDS

In August 2022, Good Shepherd formally merged with Crossings Community Clinic and became Crossings Midtown Clinic. Crossings Midtown continues to provide high-quality, dignity-affirming patient care to people who are uninsured, now with a new name.

Many ODA member dentists cared for patients at Good Shepherd, or as we called it in the late 1990s, “The Mission.” Although Good Shepherd’s 1977 origins in Chris’ Bar sound like the start of a questionable joke (some med students, homeless dudes, and a pastor walk into a bar) the mission continues more than 45 years later.

• You may have volunteered here as a dentist.

• Statistically speaking, you most likely started volunteering as a student in the student-led Extraction Clinic, serving your neighbors as soon as you had dental skills to share, carefully extracting infected teeth on Monday nights, when you could have been studying.

• Perhaps the Kids Clinic, added in 2003, is where you served.

• After 2014, you may have volunteered at the updated clinic, as we became a dental home for the adults of our medical clinic.

• Extraction Clinic, Kids Clinic, Unity Clinic, externships, partnerships with residency programs, D-DENT Community Dental Days, and Fun Fridays all continue at Crossings Midtown today.

The perfect alignment of Good Shepherd’s and Crossings Community Clinic’s missions made this merger possible. We are excited about the clinic’s future and the positive impact we will continue to have on the community, as a ministry of Crossings Community Church. Because of Good Shepherd’s rich history of service to the community combined with Crossings Community Church’s mission, we will continue to live by faith, be a voice of hope, and be known by love.

Thank you for your support and service for nearly half a century. We look forward to what God has in store in this continued partnership with Oklahoma dentists!

Dr. Jeannie Bath graduated from OU College of Dentistry in 2000 and completed her GPR at the OKC VA Hospital. She has volunteered with many charitable dental organizations and currently serves OkMOM as Pharmacy Lead. As the Dental Director for Good Shepherd Ministries in OKC, she shows God’s love by offering dental care to vulnerable members of our community and by mentoring pre-dental and dental students to do the same.

Hoping to prevent the mouth diseases she sees in adults, Dr. Bath’s alter ego, the Tooth Fairy, began teaching kids to care for their teeth by telling the story of The Three Little Teeth She presented to thousands of children in dozens of schools in four states. Unable to present for all schools, she collaborated with her brother to self-publish The Three Little Teeth as a children’s book to empower anyone (parents, teachers, and more) to educate children on mouth health.

Since 1981, students have led the Extraction Clinic at 5 p.m. every Monday during the school year. Now, during school breaks when students are unavailable, dentists can also volunteer to treat patients.

After many challenges in life, both in Burma and Oklahoma, Mr. B came to Crossings Midtown functionally edentulous, with a mouth full of root tips. Now that he’s healed and smiling, he says, “I feel like a little boy again!”