Turning Trauma to Triumph

Young & Healthy celebrates 35 years of health and smiles
By EDDIE RIVERA
Published on Nov 18, 2024

Deborah Clark, the keynote speaker at the 35th anniversary celebration of Young and Healthy, was in a bad spot. Born to Korean parents, she was adopted by an American couple as a young child, and eventually enlisted in the US military.

As she told the audience in the packed Chandelier Room at Santa Anita Park Saturday evening, when her tour of duty ended, she was astonished one day to find that her identity had been completely hacked.

With the loss of her identity and records, her world fell apart. Unable to recover her records and without any existing records, she was sinking deeper and deeper into a financial and emotional hole.

And her children needed medical and dental work. How would she pay for that?

Enter Young & Healthy. The Pasadena nonprofit helped her acquire and navigate through health insurance, and arranged medical and dental care for her children.

They helped her put her stolen life back together. And she is just one of thousands of cases over the years.

As Executive Director Ellen Kramer explained, “Young and Healthy has been in the Pasadena community all this time connecting underserved children, low-income children, vulnerable children with essential medical, dental, and mental health care.

Their partnership with USC Ostrow School of Dentistry is now over 30 years old, she said.

“They have been coming into our community with their mobile dental vans and these amazing dental professors and their students and helping hundreds of children with their oral health of course,” said Kramer.

“We know that one of the leading causes of children not going to school is dental pain and dental disease,” she continued. “And so this is a critical link in being able to get them back into their homes and schools and communities and flourishing. We are grateful for that.”

The evening honored Dr. Sanaz Fereshteh, director of the USC Mobile Dental Health Clinic, and known by friends and colleagues as “Dr. Sunny,” with the J. Donald Thomas Award.

Said Dr. Sunny, “I feel lucky to be a part of it. This partnership, if we didn’t have it, we wouldn’t be able to have these mobile clinics. We wouldn’t be able to serve [and I am] so incredibly grateful to Young and Healthy for this 30 year partnership, which is unreal to imagine.

Dr. Sunny emphasized the value of something as basic but important as dental care.

”It’s incredibly rewarding not only to take care of these kids that need us often in order to avoid missing school, but also it’s really rewarding in order to be able to show the dental students how they can give back and how they can provide service to the communities they serve.” So it’s all around really gratifying.

“Dental care can be traumatic,” she acknowledged, saying, “We have a mix of patients, ones that have never seen a dentist or ones that have seen a dentist, but didn’t have the best experience. So sometimes we’re working our way backwards to get them back to trusting us, and it’s one of the most incredible things to see that relationship form with kids and the dental students that we work with.”

Young & Healthy was created in 1990 as a small group of 19 physicians who agreed to donate their time and services to Pasadena area children who lacked access to medical and dental care.

As Dr. Sunny told the guests, “I’m really looking forward to another 30 years. And I’m just truly honored and grateful to all of you for making this happen and keeping us alive.”

More information about Young & Healthy is available at YHPasadena.org. (626)795-5166.

 

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