A Smile Can Make All the Difference
PRESS this button to see some New SmilesGiving Smiles is a non-profit 501 (c)(3) charity which seeks to improve access to a healthy smile by providing dental services for Middle Tennessee residents who have limited resources or other barriers to care. Most of our patients come to us with discomfort, missing teeth, broken fillings and a story that their only option was to have their teeth pulled instead of repaired because of the cost.
Depending on the patient and treatment plan, we can provide comprehensive dental care, including:
- Exams for adults and children
- Digital oral X-rays including full mouth Panorex imaging
- Oral cancer screenings and oral health education
- Fillings with tooth white composite or amalgam
- Dentures and partials
- Extractions, including some wisdom teeth
- Crowns
- Root canals
- Tooth whitening
- Dental cleanings and scaling
- Nitrous oxide sedation
Our History
Since moving to Middle Tennessee in the early 1990s Dr. Eileen Seitz has volunteered her dentistry at charity clinics and events throughout Tennessee. But after dental missions with her church to Haiti, she realized the need for access to dental care in low-income residents in Middle Tennessee is even greater than in Haiti. So she sold her private dental practice, and with a volunteer spirit and desire to help address the dental services inequities of the working poor in Middle Tennessee Dr. Seitz bought a dental van and in 2016 started Giving Smiles. Eileen converted the van into a fully-stocked mobile dental clinic and set out to care for smiles that needed love at food pantries, churches, homeless shelters, and provided free dentistry for struggling musicians.
To provide more comprehensive services than possible with a mobile dental van, Giving Smiles started an office-based dental clinic in Spring Hill, Tennessee in 2020.
Eileen Seitz DDS, Executive Director
Eileen is the founder of Giving Smiles.
Leanne Hoeffler, Office Administrator
Summer Wilkerson, Dental Assistant
Tracy Jones, Dental Assistant
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Mission and Vision
Our Mission:
Giving Smiles is a charitable organization helping to provide affordable, or free, dental services in Middle Tennessee for low income residents who have limited financial resources or other barriers to quality dental care.
Our Vision: We seek to work with volunteers, donors, and community organizations to bridge the gaps and improve access to affordable, low cost or free, quality dental services for low resourced residents of Middle Tennessee without regard to employment, age, gender, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, or citizenship status.
Our Core Values:
-Helping those in need
-Quality dentistry
-Compassion
-Volunteer dental service
Giving Smiles Dentistry
Giving Smiles provides compassionate, quality dental services, and oral health education with the support of dental professionals, volunteers, and other community non-profit organizations.
We deliver care using a two chair mobile dental clinic and full service three chair dental office in Spring Hill, TN. Giving Smiles is not federally-funded, state-funded, county-funded, or supported as a faith-based dental clinic. We provide some free dental care or charge patients based on a sliding-scale fee system to determine the patient contribution, if any. For the uninsured, the working poor families, the recently homeless, the local musicians without a steady paycheck, and for those with limited resources, our dentist chair is open. We’ve made it our mission to give more Middle Tennesseans in need a chance to smile.
Dr. Seitz provides all of her services for free and receives no compensation. But this is not enough. Dentistry is expensive. Supporting a dental practice involves dental professionals, support staff, specialized dental equipment, dental labs, and dental materials are that are costly. Giving Smiles needs the generosity of volunteers and donors to make up the difference.
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