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In a state where the need so overwhelms the resources, Hayden Perkins, DMD, has chosen to focus where the need is greatest.

His Oxford pediatric-dentistry practice is one of few in or around north Mississippi that will accept Medicaid patients. For him, it means a schedule of treating kids from a 20-county area, packing each day’s schedule tightly and going home weary — but also confident he’s made a difference.

“We take care of the people most dentists don’t see — the underprivileged, the Medicaid population,” he said. “They’re the ones who need the treatment most, and we feel an obligation to help those children.”

This was a course he chose while in dental school at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Under the mentorship of Neva Eklund and William Duncan, professors in pediatric and public-health dentistry, he was inspired to respond to the troubling oral health indicators among America’s young children.
“You have to have a passion for it,” he said. “I get along with children and can relate to them better. But it is a pretty high-stress job. You do have those days where every one is a screamer.”

For the majority of the week, Perkins sees patients — as many as 45 per day — in the clinic he joined in 2006. It began as a branch office for the Southaven-based Children’s Dental Center.

To care for his most-challenging patients, Perkins also spends two days per week at Baptist Memorial Hospital-North Mississippi.

“We do a lot of treatment in the operating room for children with massive amounts of dental decay,” he said.

Early childhood dental decay, also known as “caries,” is the most common chronic disease among children and has been on the rise among kids ages 2-5. Poor and minority children are most affected.

In Mississippi, only about half of dentists accept Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), creating extra pressure for those who do.

“We certainly can’t see them all, so we depend on the general dentists to do this routine care and send them to us when they need specialized care,” Perkins said.

Among the most rewarding parts of his job are the opportunities he has to actually put in action the standard for children to see a dentist at their first birthday.

“That’s been the (American Association of Pediatric Dentists’) endorsement for five years, and we’re just now starting to see the fruits of that,” he said.
“If we can do that and get the children in at that age, we can teach the parents how to avoid these early childhood caries. It usually just comes from going to bed with a bottle or sippy cup — simply poor oral hygiene.”

Educating kids and parents about good oral health habits is a priority, as Perkins visits elementary schools and Head Start centers to talk to kids about taking care of their teeth. He takes referrals of surgical cases from about 15 Head Start centers across north Mississippi, where general dentists come in to provide screenings and basic treatment for kids.

Interacting with kids and encouraging their good habits has been an effort of Perkins’ even before finishing dental school and a two-year pediatric dentistry residency at UMC. While in Jackson, he spoke to school groups for Methodist Rehabilitation Center, particularly on the importance of wearing seat belts.

Perkins lost the use of his legs in a 1991 wreck that ended his high-school football career and left him paralyzed. He was 15 at the time.

Encouraging kids not to make the same careless mistake — and helping them realize life isn’t over even if they are disabled — was his goal in serving with Methodist’s outreach program.

For Perkins, using a wheelchair is not an obstacle for his practice, except in navigating the tight passageways of his clinic when they’re crowded with staff and patients.

“Most dentists sit down all day while they do their work, so it’s not a problem,” he said.

It will be even less of a problem as his practice moves to a new 11,000-square-foot multi-specialty clinic he is building with orthodontist Todd Gilliland and periodontist Michael Perry.

Perkins is looking forward to working in his 4,500-square-foot portion of the space, to be built with an open and accessible format. They hope to open the new clinic in early 2009.

A native of Hollandale, Perkins received a bachelor’s degree in biology from Ole Miss. He then spent a year teaching math and science to high-school and junior-high students at Rossville Christian Academy in Rossville, Tenn.

He returned to Oxford — where he and his wife, Jessica, first met as undergraduates — in October 2006.

The couple has three children: Preston, nine, and John Seaton and Aston, seven-year-old twins. In addition to spending time with his family, Perkins enjoys hunting, fishing and photography.



June 2008

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