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DRS. JAMIE DIAMENT-GOLUB AND JON GOLUB LEAD HUMANITARIAN DENTAL VISITS
24
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2016 | (201) FAMILY
GLOBAL CARE Dr. Jamie Diament-Golub and her husband, Dr. Jon Golub, pose with children in
Cambodia after treating their teeth.
Golub says they hope that when they
leave the communities better understand the link between sugary foods and
drinks and poor dental hygiene, so that
“the next generation of kids being raised
can be improved.”
They enjoy seeing some long-term
results, especially in Cambodia where
they visit the same orphanage every year
and have dental histories for all the kids.
“It might go back four or five years
and you can see the first year is red all
over the chart showing cavities,” Golub
says. “By the time the kids are maybe
14 or 15 and the permanent teeth have
erupted, they have perfect dentitions
because these kids have been in the
program for a number of years and
the orphanage has really taken on the
instruction for when we’re not there.”
They’ve seen a lot of these kids leave
the orphanage for college, thanks to the
orphanage’s fundraising efforts. Along
the way, a lot of their patients help the
dentists as translators.
“We’ll take a group of them and go
off to the countryside and have them
explain to the other young children that
we’re there to help them,” Golub says.
“When they return, these kids feel so
great about themselves.”
Having a committed group of volunteers also makes the trips possible and
more efficient.
“We bring [Pediatric Dentistry] staff
members with us. We brought about a
dozen friends from Bergen County who
asked if they could help. We said, ‘You
can teach kids how to brush their teeth.
You can brush their teeth with fluoride.
You can line them up for us,’” DiamentGolub says. “We’re seeing about 2,000
kids a week. There’s a lot of orchestration with the kids before they even get
to see a dentist.”
In addition to local volunteers, they
also bring students from Columbia and
Tufts University, where Diament-Golub
also teaches.
“Not only do they get to learn, but
there’s a certain amount of sustainability there,” she says. “We need young
people to take over our organization as
the founders get older and older. So we
try to turn the dental students on to the
idea of volunteerism and incorporating
that into their careers and lives.” ●
– SAM PASSOW
201magazine.com
COURTESY OF DR. JAMIE DIAMENT-GOLUB
W
ife and
husband
Drs. Jamie
DiamentGolub and
Jon Golub,
a pediatric dentist and orthodontist,
respectively, travel to remote areas of
the world with a group of volunteers to
deliver free dental care to children.
Diament-Golub, who is part of
Pediatric Dentistry in Fort Lee and
Westwood, began these trips about 10
years ago when, as a faculty member
at Columbia University’s dental school,
she was asked to accompany a group
to Jamaica. Her husband, the in-house
orthodontist at her practice, joined her
a few years later when their children
were off to college. Now they take four
or five trips a year to Cambodia, Cape
Verde, Guatemala, Haiti, Jamaica,
Mongolia and the Philippines.
Health Care International takes them
to Jamaica to treat kids and adults, while
Kids International Dental Services serves
children in a wide range of countries.
“It’s basic dental care because it’s
very remote, very rustic areas of the
world,” Golub says. “A real basic hurdle
over there is the areas we’re going to
don’t necessarily have electricity. Some
don’t have running water.”
Diament-Golub says one of the
hardest things is finding their
connection in the countries.
“Without a liaison, you can’t get to
these places where we’re going and
have some kind of sustainability,” she
says. “In other words, who’s going to
fluorinate the kids every six months
when we’re not there? Who’s going to
make sure the kids are brushing their
teeth and eating healthy foods and not
having candy and soda all day long?”