The Hutto-Patterson Charitable Foundation will give $3 million to establish the Hutto-Patterson Institute for Community Health at the Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles.
The grant will be used for an eight-chair mobile clinic trailer, endowed faculty funds, and student scholarships focusing on those who work in the schools' outreach programs, according to USC. The funding will provide services to more than 45,000 underserved children in the Children's Health and Maintenance Program (CHAMP).
The foundation was established with an inheritance from the dentist grandfather of Catherine Hutto Gordon, president of the Hutto-Patterson foundation.
USC's mobile and stationary dental clinics are located throughout underserved communities, which provide much-needed oral health services to vulnerable groups. The Ostrow School of Social Work has helped underprivileged children and families find "dental homes" by providing oral healthcare and assistance in overcoming barriers to getting routine dental care. In 2012, a five-year, $18.3 million grant from First 5 LA enabled the schools to start CHAMP, which travels to Head Start and Women, Infants, Children centers throughout central Los Angeles, where Ostrow school clinicians screen children through the age of 5 for dental problems, administer preventive fluoride treatments, and provide families with oral health education
