The Medica Foundation has awarded $25,000 in grants to two nonprofit organizations in Grand Marais.
Sawtooth Mountain Clinic received a $5,000 grant to support health-related programming core to its mission. North Shore Health Care Foundation received a $20,000 grant for its Oral Health Task Force, which provides free oral screening and financial help for low-income children in Cook County to receive in-depth dental care.
Funding for medical students at clinic
Sawtooth Mountain Clinic Director Rita Plourde said, “Sawtooth Mountain Clinic is grateful for the funding received from the Medica Foundation. The focus of these funds will be to assist with educating medical students who come to precept with SMC’s physicians.”
Sawtooth Mountain Clinic had three medical students and three residents in 2014 and so far in 2015 there have been two medical students and two residents. A resident is an already licensed physician, most often in his or her second year of a three-year residency. Medical students are often first-year medical students who shadow clinic physicians for three to five days several times a year. The medical students come from the medical school program at the University of Minnesota.
Oral Health Task Force expands screening
The North Shore Health Care Foundation’s Oral Health Task Force, which has screened approximately 800 children at local schools and approximately another 100 through the Early Childhood Family Education program since its beginning in 2011-2013, will use the funding to continue providing a way for all Cook County children to have dental screenings and then get the preventive care and restorative work they need, no matter what their families’ financial situations are.
Georgene Daubanton, with the Oral Health Task Force, recently announced an age increase for the children served from 18 months to now 26 years of age. The parents of those children need to meet the sliding fee. The fee scale was recently increased to help qualify even more families. Anyone with questions about the Oral Health Task Force is encouraged to contact Georgene at 387-2334.
The Medica Foundation is a nonprofit, charitable grant-making foundation. It is an affiliate of Medica Health Plans, a Minnesotabased nonprofit HMO. In 2014, Medica gave $1.4 million in grants to 99 nonprofit organizations throughout Medica’s service area, which includes Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and western Wisconsin.
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