Free dental clinic opens in Marble Falls

The Highland Lakes Crisis Network is now offering free dental care every other Friday from 8 a.m.-3 p.m. at its Marble Falls office, 700 Avenue T.

“It’s a dental clinic for the community for folks who might not be able to get dental care otherwise,” said Jennifer Banton, founder of Hill Country Smiles Inc. She played a key role in the clinic’s creation.

The Marble Falls office held a soft launch on June 7. Dental professionals provided $7,400 of free care to 17 patients.

“We had no publicity, no 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’re aiming to eliminate first.”

All treatments will be done by volunteer dental professionals.

“This is the dental community trying to take care of our general community,” Banton said. “This isn’t any one practice’s project.”

Banton and Naumann previously co-chaired a Texas Mission of Mercy event in February 2023 that provided over $620,000 of care to more than 650 patients. That 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 all of them were local people. They were people in our backyard with a significant need.”

The road to the clinic’s opening has been littered with spiritual 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 step there and it sort of takes care of itself. The whole thing is a testimony of God at work.”

One of those “God-at-work” incidents happened while Naumann searched for equipment for the clinic.

“Right when we first started thinking about doing this, (Banton) got a call from a dentist in Houston who was shutting down his practice,” Naumann said. “He wanted to donate his stuff.”

Naumann was getting ready to make the 200-plus-mile trip to Houston when the dentist told him the equipment had been moved to a storage unit—only 1,000 feet from the Crisis Network office in Marble Falls. 

“He didn’t know us or where we were located,” Naumann smiled. “It’s like we stumbled onto it. It’s just been stories like that, over and over.”

The free dental clinic currently operates out of three cubicles on one side of a trailer the HLCN owns. The organization has imminent plans to expand it to the other side of the trailer and install four more operatories.

“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 on it,” Naumann said. “We’ve got most of the equipment and foundational work in place, so I think we’ll be able to do it pretty 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 are Mondays.”

The clinic will need more volunteers to accomplish this.

“We need dentists, dental hygienists, assistants, front office, and community volunteers,” Banton said.

Visit the Highland Lakes Crisis Network’s website for more information.

nathan@thepicayune.com