That is me at the AISD Back to School Fair at AT&T Stadium Aug 2017
Today we’d like to introduce you to Nancy Manion Blinn.
Nancy Blinn, RDH, has been an Arlington resident most of her life. She went all the way through the AISD school system and hails as a Lamar graduate, where she first started working in the dental field as a dental assistant through the Health Occupations Education program. She went on to study Dental Hygiene at Tarrant County College and graduated in 1987. She has spent the last 30 plus years working as a Registered Dental Hygienist in varying capacities within the dental field, including an 18 month stay in Zurich, Switzerland. She specialized in pediatric dentistry and patient behavior management techniques and worked in private practice for over 12 years and at Children’s Medical Center of Dallas for 3 years before transferring to the Northeast with her husband and daughter. In Connecticut, she continued her passion of working with special needs children and the under-served.
She is a past President of the Texas Dental Hygienists’ Association and of Greater Fort Worth Dental Hygienists’ Society and has provided Continuing Education Courses through the Southwest Dental Conferences’ “CE Express” and “Lunch and Learn series”.
In 2014, Nancy moved back to take over as Executive Director for the nonprofit organization, Dental Health for Arlington, Inc.
Dental Health Arlington is currently going through a rebirth with several staffing changes, new board members and a brand-new clinic with more chairs to accommodate all the people in need.
DHA serves over 10,000 people in low income families either with free preventive care in their school based program, SMILES or low-cost, routine dental services through the DHA Dental Clinic.
Currently, Nancy lives in Arlington with her husband, Bill, a jeweler and a volunteer firefighter. They have 1 daughter, Emma, a freshman at Stephen F. Austin State University. She is involved in Rotary, Chamber of Commerce, TCC Dental Hygiene and Dental Assisting Advisory Boards and recently joined the Association for Fundraising Professionals and is currently working on her nonprofit management certification.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Taking over as Executive Director of Dental Health Arlington has been a huge undertaking and a learning curve, coming from the clinical side of dentistry to the world of nonprofit! I have had to learn the grant writing and fundraising as well as the business side of running a dental clinic and school-based program. Throw in the mix of an unexpected move (due to progress in downtown Arlington), running a Capital Campaign, and overseeing the construction of the new clinic and you can say I have earned a few more grey hairs! My email signature has a famous quote under it “If there is no struggle, there is no progress” ~ Frederick Douglass. However, I wouldn’t trade any of it. I enjoy being an advocate for dentistry for people in need. I love the fact that we have a beautiful new clinic so our patients have access to getting their mouth healthy and in turn improve their lives! We make things affordable for our disadvantaged neighbors as well as teach the young students in the AISD about healthy dental habits. We have expanded our outreach to approximately 12,000 people in Tarrant County in the last year alone!
We’d love to hear more about your business.
Dental Health Arlington (DHA) started as a United Way Needs Assessment in 1991. As a result of that, the United Way of Tarrant County found no affordable or free dental services in Southeast Tarrant County. Out of that, Dental Health Arlington started in 1992 with an all-volunteer staff, in a donated space of 2 chairs. The dentists that were seeing patients noticed that children were especially neglected and experienced severe pain and infections in their mouths. The next year, a pilot project was started at 2 elementary schools to provide oral hygiene education and screenings. At the time, about 70% of students had some type of infection or decay in their mouths. Fast forward 25 years and we are now in all 40 Title I schools in Arlington and 1 in Mansfield. We provide dental education, screenings, decay-preventing sealants and fluoride to over 9000 1st-3rd graders. At the end of the 2017 school year the decay rate in this population was down to approximately 28%!
In the DHA Dental Clinic, we provide a variety of low-cost dental services to all ages to Tarrant County residents.
Patients must qualify for the clinic and follow the HUD guidelines for low income families. DHA provides space in our schedule to accommodate at least 3 emergency patients per day. We accept walk-in new patients at 8am on a first come, first serve basis; in addition to having scheduled appointments for routine dental and preventive services throughout the day.
We would like to expand our services to the Dallas, Parker and other surrounding counties as our clinic grows and more funding is provided. Unfortunately, the need outweighs the resources.
What were you like growing up?
I was the youngest of 9 kids. I always had a lot of noise and chaos around me and actually I thrived on that and continue to do so to this day! I loved meeting new people and never met a stranger. I loved playing baseball with my brothers and played organized softball and soccer. As a high school student I was interested in dentistry and started in a work program. I was always a hard worker. I liked working better than school! I still love to learn and I think that is why I enjoy my job now so much. It’s constant learning, living among the chaos, putting out fires on a daily basis. It certainly is never boring and no two days are alike!
Contact Info:
- Address: 501 W. Sanford Street Suite 11
Arlington, Texas 76011 - Website: www.dentalhealtharlington.org
- Phone: 817-277-1165
- Email: info@dentalhealtharlington.org
- Instagram: dental_health_arlington
- Facebook: FB@DentalHealthArlington
- Twitter: Twitter@DentalHealthA
SMILES Team working at an AISD Elementary School
Annual Golf Tournament “Tooth Fairy Golfers”
Dr. Maxey screening students
President of Board, Dr. John Avila, volunteering in DHA Dental Clinic
Staff & Volunteers at Back to School Fair at AT&T Stadium
Golfers
Staff goofing off
Honoring SMILES Director, Glenda Bell #dfwshoutout by Kristina Anderson Group
Image Credit:
All photos taken by DHA Employees with signed photo releases from all parties.
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