Grins off the grid
Posted: November 14, 2014
Eleven countries, 15 mission trips, and four more on the docket: April Westfall, DMD, ’10, has no shortage of stamps in her passport.
“My very first mission trip was my first year of dental school,” Dr. Westfall recalls. “An upperclassman presented me with an opportunity to visit Costa Rica and Panama during spring break.”
After that, she was hooked.
“I went to Peru a few months later and knew I would do this the rest of my life,” she says.
Dr. Westfall has been to all corners of the world, including many uncharted countries like Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands, South Sudan, Guatemala, and Bolivia. Each trip boasts a unique and special memory to Dr. Westfall. But one left her with a particularly fond memory.
In 2012, while on a mission trip to the Dominican Republic, she and another dentist were left stranded for an extra two days as a result of Hurricane Sandy. A dental lab technician, who came to check out the organization for which they were volunteering, introduced himself to Dr. Westfall and her colleague. When they discovered the technician owned a lab, they immediately thought of a 12-year-old girl they had just treated.
“The young girl had developmental issues, did not have most of her permanent teeth, and the primary teeth she did have were grossly decayed,” says Dr. Westfall.
In just two days, the product of three visionaries and an improvised prosthetics lab made an incomparable difference for the young girl. The result was a set of partial dentures created from makeshift dental burs constructed with borrowed Dremel bits from a local nail salon.
“The experience of working as a team when we did not even know each other, the equipment challenges that seemed impossible, and doing something none of us had done before and achieving success and a delighted patient, was priceless,” says Dr. Westfall. “I will never forget it.”
Averaging four mission trips annually, Dr. Westfall still commits to working four times a year, for one month at a time, with Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Clinic in Bethel, Alaska. She travels to remote villages, providing oral healthcare to Alaska Natives who would not otherwise have access to a dentist. Bethel, and the more than 50 surrounding villages, are only accessible by plane or boat.
Showing no indication of slowing down, Dr. Westfall is just as enthusiastic about her upcoming off-the-grid missions as her first.