Editor's Note: This story first appeared in the Spring 2025 Dental Link magazine.
By: Jeff Akey
They say that a smile is “a curve that straightens everything out.” Behind a smile is usually joy being expressed, laughter taking place, kindness being shown. But some people are limited in their expression of joy, laughter, and kindness because they are embarrassed of their smile.
His Hands Dental Clinic in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is a nonprofit ministry that provides free healthcare to Cedar Rapids and surrounding communities. In May 2024 the dental clinic, led by Dr. Jeffrey Akey, a 1987 UI College of Dentistry graduate, was able to reintroduce a patient named Hanny to her smile.
Hanny arrived at His Hands with many teeth that were either unrestorable or infected.
“She needed extractions, fillings, and upper and lower removeable partial dentures to replace the missing teeth,” says Akey.
A few years ago, His Hands partnered with the College of Dentistry to invite students to volunteer and help at the clinic.
“God impressed upon our hearts to recruit ‘smile makers,’ says Akey, “We went to the college with pizzas and invited students to bring their talents to the patients at His Hands. As it turns out, we just needed to ‘ask and you shall receive.’”
Over the past two years, His Hands has had over 70 students volunteering two Saturday mornings a month during the fall and spring semesters.
Hanny is from the Marshall Islands, an island country in the Pacific Ocean that consists of over 1,200 islands. She came to the clinic with her daughter and granddaughter to help translate. For the next five appointments, six different students — Jack Joyce, Morgan Swanger, Ben Gilles, Olivia Bartholomew, Saba Manafi, and Tanveera Vasdev — worked on Hanny.
“Some did extractions, some fillings, some assistant, some making the impressions for her partial, and some selected the shade of the teeth and tried the teeth in her mouth,” says Akey, “I saw Hanny to deliver the finished partials then a week later I saw her for a follow-up to fine-tune her fit and relieve areas that were bothering her.”
During her final appointment and after the final adjustments were made, Akey realized that she was finally comfortable. He handed her a mirror to look at her teeth.
“When she looked at the mirror, she got very excited and I said, ‘You have a beautiful smile! Look at that, go out in the world and smile, Hanny’,” Akey recalls, “We all rejoiced over the finished product and as I walked them to the door to say goodbye, Hanny started to sing me a song in her language. Tears filled my eyes.”
The result is a collaborative effort of His Hands, Iowa dental students, and the community.
“Our dental volunteers, staff, Iowa’s dental students, DPS lab, donors and prayer support all worked together to bring Hanny a beautiful smile,” says Akey, “This whole experience was like a true mission trip right here in Cedar Rapids and it was beautiful.”