Hill Country Smiles Inc. founder Jennifer Banton and Highland Lakes Crisis Network executive director Kevin Naumann inside one of the treatment areas at HLCN’s new dental clinic, 700 Avenue T in Marble Falls. Staff photo by Nathan Bush
The Highland Lakes Crisis Network now offers free dental care every other Friday from 8am. until 3 p.m. at the Marble Falls office, 700 Avenue T.
“It’s a dental clinic for the community for people who might not be able to get dental care otherwise,” said Jennifer Banton, founder of Hill Country Smiles Inc. He played a key role in the establishment of the clinic.
The Marble Falls office held a soft launch on June 7th. Dental professionals provided $7,400 in free care to 17 patients.
“We had no publicity, nothing, and we still had 17 patients,” said Kevin Naumann, executive director of the Highland Lakes Crisis Network.
Dental services include x-rays, exams, fillings and extractions. The clinic is open to everyone.
“The primary goal is to eliminate pain and infection,” Banton said. “If we can do more than that, we will, but that’s what we aim to eliminate first.”
All treatments will be performed by volunteer dental professionals.
“This is the dental community trying to take care of our general community,” Banton said. “This is not the work of some practice.”
Bandon and Nauman previously co-chaired a Texas Mission of Mercy event in February 2023 that provided more than $620,000 in care to more than 650 patients. This sparked the idea for a regular clinic.
“When we had the opportunity to bring TMOM to Marble Falls, we realized how great the need was because we had so many patients over those two days,” Naumann said. “Most of them were local. They were people in our backyard with significant needs.”
The path to the clinic’s opening is fraught with intellectual interventions, Naumann continued.
“God has taken over,” he said. “That’s been the trajectory of everything we’ve ever done. God puts these little nuggets in front of us and says, “This is the next step.” We get in there and it kind of takes care of itself. The whole thing is a testimony of God at work.”
One of these “God-at-work” incidents occurred while Naumann was looking for equipment for the clinic.
“Just when we started thinking about doing this, (Banton) got a call from a dentist in Houston who was closing his practice,” Naumann said. “He wanted to donate his stuff.”
Naumann was preparing to make the 200-plus mile trip to Houston when his dentist told him the equipment had been moved to a storage facility—just 1,000 feet from the Crisis Network office in Marble Falls.
“He didn’t even know where we were,” smiled Naumann. “It’s like we fell on him. It was just stories like that, over and over again.”
The free dental clinic currently operates out of three cubicles on one side of a trailer owned by HLCN. The organization has imminent plans to expand it to the other side of the trailer and install four more operators.
“If we get to a place where the dental community steps up and says, ‘I want to help,’ and we’re able to say, ‘We can sustain this,’ we’ll pull the trigger,” Naumann said. . “We have most of the equipment and groundwork in place, so I think we’ll be able to get it done fairly quickly.”
The dental office could expand its hours in the near future to provide care to even more people in need.
“The goal is to be open multiple days a week,” Banton said. “The next day we’ll probably be able to add is Mondays.”
The clinic will need more volunteers to make this happen.
“We need dentists, dentists, assistants, front desk and community volunteers,” Banton said.
Visit it Highland Lakes Crisis Network website For more information.
nathan@thepicayune.com
