John Bruppacher, DMD: Overlook Medical Center – PGY1

Honduras: May 2025

 My recent weeklong dental service trip to Honduras was an amazing experience with a great group of fellow volunteers. Much of our time was spent in the frontier of Honduras, centered around the town of Concepcion in the Intibuca region. For the first two days, the focus of our group was community outreach. Shoulder to shoulder works with a local dentist in the area to provide oral health screenings, education and treatment to many of the elementary school students in the region. I was fortunate enough to visit 5 schools and help screen over 175 students along with my assistant and the two dental leads on the trip. The focus of the program is prevention. By applying topical fluoride and Silver-diamine-fluoride (SDF), we can stop the progression of cavities and prevent new ones from forming in baby teeth. Once adult teeth erupt, the children are brought to the clinic for sealants and more comprehensive care.

  The next three days revolved around treating children and adults back at the dental clinic. We had access to most of the luxuries of our dental clinic at Overlook including x-rays and a variety of dental instruments. The local dentist arranged for patients to come to the office on a given day and receive treatment. Patients would all arrive at the same time early in the morning and wait until they could be seen, a far cry from the tightly regulated schedules back in the states. We saw about 35 patients over the three days with mostly fillings and extractions. Everyone was extremely grateful to be receiving care and the local employees of Shoulder to Shoulder were incredible hosts. There is so much important work to still be done in Honduras, and I was proud to be a small part of the effort to change the health outcomes for so many people that desperately need it.