During the past 12 months, U.S. Oral Surgery Management (USOSM) surgeon partners and their teams provided free oral care to more than 2,170 patients in Tanzania, Belize, Kenya, and Sierra Leone as part of the USOSM Medical Mission Reimbursement Program. Treatments varied in each location based on need and included services such as tooth extractions, implants, cleft lip and palate treatments, and lesion removal and pathology.
Participating surgeon partners included Elevated Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery’s Randall Russell; Southeastern Minnesota Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery’s Richard H. Kim; Colorado Oral Surgery’s Michael A. Hale; and Momenta Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery’s Emad Abdou.
“We created the USOSM Medical Mission Reimbursement Program to support USOSM surgeon partners who participate in medical mission work, to encourage others to give back, and to share knowledge between our surgeon partners on the best ways to organize and implement medical mission trips, so that each trip is as effective as possible. This will enable participating surgeons to reach more people,” said USOSM CEO Doug Drew. “Our surgeon partners are making a tremendous difference, and we’re honored to help support them.”
Created in 2023, the dedicated reimbursement program is designed to enable more surgeon participation. To be eligible, the mission trip must be aligned with USOSM’s medical mission philosophies. It must be medically related and within the scope of oral surgery and facial reconstruction, the majority of time must be spent on mission work, and most importantly, it must include a teaching/knowledge-sharing component.
About the medical mission trips’
Randall Russell, DDS, is an oral and maxillofacial surgeon with Elevated Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery in Aurora, Colorado. Over the years, Dr. Russell has participated in several medical mission trips, but this was his first with his family. Dr. Russell was the only oral and maxillofacial surgeon on the care team, which also included multiple dentists, an orthodontist, a CRNA, and their families. Dr. Russell, his wife Heidi, and their children say they consider themselves “very fortunate to have been able to participate and treat the amazing people of Tanzania.”
“In Tanzania, the dental care shortage is critical. According to the Dental Legacy Foundation—the nonprofit that we partnered with—in rural areas of Tanzania, only one dentist serves an average of 400,000 people, and 76% of children under 12 have never seen a dentist,” said Dr. Russell. “There’s so little dental care available and such a tremendous need.”
Dr. Russell and his team brought essential dental care to more than 1,500 patients, providing dental cleanings and hygiene education, fluoride treatments, extractions, restorations, root canal therapy, and pathology diagnosis and removal. In addition, Dr. Russell treated two cases of baseball-sized ossifying fibroma—rare benign tumors made of bone-like tissue that form within the jawbone.
In these cases, the lesions were so large that the patients’ teeth would not come together, preventing them from chewing. Dr. Russell and the surgery team removed the lesions and completed facial reconstruction, giving the patients the ability to chew food for the first time in their lives.
Richard H. Kim, DDS, MD, is an oral and maxillofacial surgeon with Southeastern Minnesota Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery, which has locations in Mankato and Rochester, Minnesota. This was Dr. Kim’s 13th annual medical mission trip to Belize. He began volunteering there at the request of the chairman of Minnesota State University’s dental hygiene department, who asked Dr. Kim to lead a group of hygiene staff and students—along with fellow dentists and oral surgeons—to “go help the people of Belize.”
“As a son of a pastor, I felt compelled to answer this calling,” said Dr. Kim. “Many of our patients wouldn’t have received treatment otherwise. Helping them is both a responsibility and an honor, and I’m grateful for the opportunity.”
Over the years, Dr. Kim and his colleagues have treated more than 600 patients in Belize. During his most recent trip, Dr. Kim and his team treated more than 50 patients in the Ambergris Caye area through two dental clinics: the clinic at Holy Cross Anglican School and the San Pedro Polyclinic. Treatments included 119 restorative fillings and 58 extractions, as well as teeth cleanings, oral exams, and educational services.
Michael A. Hale, DDS, is an oral and maxillofacial surgeon with Colorado Oral Surgery, which has locations in Parker and Denver, Colorado. This year, during a span of just five days, Dr. Hale and his mission team treated approximately 600 patients from the Eldoret community in Kenya’s Rift Valley. Although Eldoret is a significant urban area and the second-largest medical destination in the country, it has extremely limited dental care options and substantial unmet dental needs.
“It was a very moving experience,” said Dr. Hale. “Hundreds of children, many with visible facial abscesses and severely decayed teeth, were given priority. As a team, we extracted more than a thousand painful, hopeless teeth; restored hundreds of teeth that could be salvaged; bonded bridges for patients who were missing anterior teeth; and removed various lesions manageable with local anesthesia. We worked non-stop from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. each day, treating patients of all ages.”
Dr. Hale’s wife and two of their children assisted the dental care team with tasks such as helping with sterilization and sanitation and providing tooth-brushing demonstrations. This was Dr. Hale’s first medical mission trip to Kenya. He has previously completed medical mission trips to Haiti and Samoa.
Emad Abdou, DDS, FACS, FAAP, is an oral and maxillofacial surgeon with Momenta Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery in Roseville, Minnesota. Dr. Abdou specializes in treating children and adults with facial anomalies, including cleft lip and palate, corrective jaw surgery, treatment of facial tumors and cysts, and dentoalveolar surgery.
This year, Dr. Abdou spent two weeks aboard the Global Mercy, a Mercy Ships vessel anchored off the coast of Sierra Leone. While there, he and his team provided surgical treatment for 20 pediatric patients suffering from cleft lip, cleft palate, or related complications.
“Many patients with cleft palate don’t survive past infancy due to malnourishment and inability to feed. In developed countries, we have specialized bottles to help with feeding, but they’re not available in many parts of the world,” said Dr. Abdou. “These surgeries can also give children the ability to grow and integrate into society without feeling isolated due to their appearance, which is an important part of any child’s psychosocial development.”
This was Dr. Abdou’s first medical mission trip with Mercy Ships and his first in Africa. He has previously completed mission trips to Colombia and Ecuador.
About USOSM
Headquartered in Irving, Texas, USOSM sets the standard for oral and maxillofacial surgery management. A management services organization spanning 31 states, USOSM has built a best-in-class network of premier oral and maxillofacial surgeon partners. USOSM provides operational, financial, and administrative support services to fuel clinical excellence, innovation, and wealth creation. Visit https://www.usosm.com.
