The Toothmobile, a mobile dental clinic that serves more than 1,000 students each year, is indicative of the problem with access to dental care in rural Columbus County, where dentists are hard to come by. County Health Director Kim Smith says: “There’s just not enough dentists,” adding that there are only five private dentists in the county of about 50,000 people. Bladen, Columbus, Robeson and Scotland counties in rural southeastern North Carolina are all considered Dental Health Professional Shortage Areas by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Rural areas struggle to attract and keep dentists, who often seek the higher salaries on offer in urban and suburban areas. “They want to be in a Raleigh or a Charlotte or a Greenville where there’s more people,” Smith says. “There’s a lot of people who just don’t want to live in a rural area.”
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