Mount Wachusett Community College Awarded 2021 Activation Fund Grant for Dental Clinic Enhancements
Mount Wachusett Community College (MWCC) will utilize the $73,903 Activation Fund grant from The Health Foundation of Central Massachusetts at its Dental Clinic to enhance its sterilization center. This enhancement will allow MWCC to improve training for dental hygiene and dental assistant students in state-of-the art sterilization and infection control procedures and processes.
The grant will enable MWCC’s Dental Education program to expand its offerings into new certification and continuing education programming in the area of Infection Control and Safety in the Dental Setting. Additionally, the grant enables MWCC to host the Montachusett Regional Vocational Technical School Dental Assisting program students in the clinical setting.
Community Health Connections has partnered with MWCC’s Dental Education program since its inception, playing a key role in the programs founding in 2005 through its support of the Oral Health Initiative of North Central Massachusetts, a Round 1 Synergy Initiative project also funded through The Health Foundation of Central Massachusetts. The clinic is co-located with CHC Community Health Center on Nichols Road in Fitchburg, enabling students to learn alongside CHC dentists. Since the program’s founding, 257 dental hygiene and assisting graduates have entered the dental workforce and over 9,000 patients have been served by students in MWCC’s Dental Education Clinic.
“The partnership between MWCC and Community Health Connections has and will continue to have an impact on oral health in Central Massachusetts and across the Commonwealth,” stated Cindy Cadoret, Director of Dental Education Programs at MWCC.