About the St. Louis Dental Center

Setting the standard

Unlike other dental clinics, the St. Louis Dental Center is a part of a dental teaching institution - the A.T. Still University’s Missouri School of Dentistry & Oral Health. We offer a range of dental services similar to many private dental offices. Our faculty’s expertise and available technology allows us to offer more services than many other clinics.

We offer general and specialty dental services including urgent care, comprehensive exams and individualized treatment plans, periodontic care, restorative care, oral surgery, and many others. There are 93 total chairs in our state-of-the-art facility to provide compassionate care for all those seeking it.

Community health centers

Community health centers (CHCs) are community-based and patient-directed organizations that serve populations with limited access to healthcare. The St. Louis Dental Center is made possible because of a unique partnership between A.T. Still University and Affinia Healthcare. Affinia Healthcare is an established Federally Qualified Health Center providing access to affordable healthcare resources, including dental care, for more than 100 years. CHCs are expected to serve as core safety net providers in meeting the increased demand for care and maintaining delivery of clinical preventive services in the communities they serve.

The heart of our clinic

As a teaching center, our student dentists work under supervision of A.T. Still University faculty dentists. Faculty include both general dentists as well as specialists in various. Before providing care at the St. Louis Dental Center, students complete two years of diadactic education at ATSU’s campus in Kirksville, Missouri. Student training involves hundreds of hours of patient observation and practice on human simulators, complete with realistic teeth, gums, tongue, and jaws.

Students train for four years to become dentists. The first two years, students focus on health sciences, clerkships in general dentistry, and dental simulation exercises. In the third and fourth years, they treat patients at the St. Louis Dental Center and undergo external rotations at community health centers across the region. The A.T. Still University Missouri School of Dentistry & Oral Health dental program strongly emphasizes patient care experiences through simulation, integration of biomedical and clinical sciences, and problem-solving scenarios to achieve clinical experience, and includes a strong component of public health, leadership, and practice. Upon graduation, each student will receive a certificate in public health with the option to receive a master’s degree in public health.

The student dentist who will care for you has been exceptionally trained and screened. Your student dentist has been carefully supervised and has practiced dental skills and techniques for hundreds of hours in simulation laboratories.

Interested in becoming a dentist? For more information, call:
660.626.2237

Accredited excellence in dentistry

The Missouri School of Dentistry & Oral Health is accredited by the Commission on Dental Accreditation and has been granted the accreditation status of “initial accreditation.” The Commission is a specialized accrediting body recognized by the United States Department of Education. The Commission on Dental Accreditation can be contacted at (312) 440-4653 or at 211 East Chicago Avenue, Chicago, IL 60611. The Commission’s web address is: ada.org/100.aspx

Affinia Healthcare is a federally qualified health center, 501 (c) non-profit, FTCA deemed, and is accredited through The Joint Commission and NCQA organizations.