At Dientes, we envision a community where children can focus on school instead of a toothache, adults can make good first impressions and get a job because they have a healthy smile, and seniors can comfortably eat nutritious foods.
Our goal is to make prevention more common than treatment.
We serve publicly insured and uninsured patients of all ages through four clinics in Santa Cruz County and an Outreach Program with multiple locations at schools and community hubs. We offer affordable sliding scale fees for those without insurance. For low-income patients in our community, we are the only provider of dentures, oral surgery, and endodontics (root canals).
We’ve expanded!
In a community where nearly 15 percent of Live Oak Elementary School students are homeless, 15,000 people do not have a doctor, and 78 percent of adults on Medi-Cal do not have a dentist, the need for integrated services is great and the demand far outweighs capacity. Dientes, Santa Cruz Community Health, and MidPen Housing have opened a vibrant 3.7-acre health and housing complex in the heart of Live Oak at 1500 Capitola Road. Phase one is complete and we are now on our way to increasing access to healthcare and affordable housing in Santa Cruz County, providing healthcare for up to 10,000 patients, and soon, affordable housing for 157 people.
We stand together for equity and justice for all.
We believe that having access to oral healthcare is a social justice issue—one that we fight to correct every day. Dientes addresses inequities created by race, ethnicity, language, zip code, income, education, gender, and age by providing access to high quality, affordable oral healthcare—so that everyone has the dignity that comes from a healthy smile. We also do this by supporting a diverse workforce and providing opportunities for all races and genders to advance in their careers.
The results are in!
After an enormous amount of work to expand access to oral health care in Santa Cruz County we have made incredible progress.
View the 2022 Oral Health Needs Assessment
