The New York Times Highlights Efforts of GSDM Fellow Dr. Laura Kaufman

Dr. Laura Kaufman provides patients with cleanings, simple extractions, denture repairs, and complete denture fabrication. This may seem pretty standard, but the difference is that Dr. Kaufman does all of this in her patient’s homes.

Dr. Kaufman is in her second-year of a federally funded Geriatric Fellowship that is a collaboration between the Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine and Boston Medical Center, led by Geriatric Dentistry Program Director Dr. Paula K. Friedman. Fellows focus on increasing access to oral health care for the underserved geriatric population of Boston.

Said Kaufman, “Together with my assistant, Tiffany Setiono, and often with medical or dental students, we go on visits to home-bound geriatric patients in Boston, providing oral health evaluations and treatments. Our patients are referred to us through the Boston University Geriatrics Section at Boston Medical Center.”

She continued, “In the past 18 months we have made more than 200 home visits. We examine and treat our patients in their kitchens, living rooms, and sometimes even while they are lying in bed. Recently we have succeeded in arranging logistics to have some of our home patients treated in the School of Dental Medicine, by dental students.”

Prior to enrolling in the Geriatric Fellowship Program Dr. Kaufman practiced dentistry for several years in a private practice in suburban Boston and before that in Tel-Aviv, Israel for 18 years. Inspired by the growing number of geriatric patients she was encountering in private practice and her home-bound father-in-law who had no access to at-home dental services, she enrolled in the program.

In addition to her home-visits Dr. Kaufman also teaches in the School of Dental Medicine Pre-Clinical and Clinical Removable Prosthodontics Sections, and she hopes to continue this after completing the fellowship program in August.

Read more about Dr. Kaufman’s work and the need for healthcare professionals to treat the geriatric population in the March 7, New York Times article, “Needed: Health Professionals to Treat the Aging.”