Delta Dental is giving Eastern Washington University a $1 million gift to expand and relocate Eastern’s dental hygiene program in Spokane.
Delta today presented Eastern with a check to help with the costs of building a new 46-chair clinic in the SIERR Building. Construction will soon begin. The new teaching facility is expected to be ready for students and patients early next year. It will replace the clinic Eastern has operated for years on the Riverpoint Campus, a clinic that is open to the public, including people without dental insurance.
The new facility will join Eastern’s other health sciences programs on Spokane’s Health Peninsula, including the RIDE dental education program that it operates in partnership with the University of Washington.
“We're hoping to get a partnership going so that our dental therapy students can work in their simulation lab, and then their RIDE students are going to come and do some patient care in our dental hygiene clinic,” said Lori Speer, the chair of Eastern’s dental hygiene department. “So we have a great partnership with them and looking forward to developing that more.”
Dawn Lewis-Kinnunen, the dean of Eastern’s College of Health Science and Public Health, says the move is part of an expansion of its dental education.
“We're bringing in the Masters of Dental Therapy into the Department of Dental Hygiene so that we can provide additional workforce for dental health and oral health in our communities,” she said.
Eastern also has nursing, physical and occupational therapy students studying at the Health Peninsula facilities.
The new clinic is scheduled to open early next year. Until then, Eastern will continue to operate the clinic it has occupied on the Riverpoint Campus for many years.
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