Episode 28 – VHHA’s Patients Come First Podcast - Dr. Cameron Roberts

SUMMARY: In this episode, we’ve partnered with the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association (VHHA) to bring you the VHHA’s Patients Come First podcast, featuring Dr. Cameron Roberts, DDS, Dental Director for the Augusta Regional Dental Clinic. Dr. Roberts is a VDA Member who provides oral healthcare to underserved individuals in the Shenandoah Valley and is a practitioner with Dental Health Associates. He joins us for a conversation about his personal and professional journey, family history with dentistry, the work of the clinic, the anticipated impact of federal Medicaid funding cuts, and more. 

This episode of the Patients Come First podcast was reposted with permission from the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association. 

EPISODE CREDITS:

Producer/Host: Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association

Guest(s): Dr. Cameron Roberts

Patients Come First Podcast - Send questions, comments, or feedback to pcfpodcast@vhha.com.

Subscribe, share, and send your feedback and topic ideas to thefulcrumpodcast@vadental.org.

The information, opinions, and recommendations presented in this Podcast are for general information only, and any reliance on the information provided in this Podcast is done at your own risk. This Podcast should not be considered professional, medical, or legal advice. 

Music in this episode from Epidemic Sound

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:13

This is Paul Logan with the Virginia Dental Association. This week we have a special guest episode, which first appeared on the Patients Come First podcast, presented by the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association. Each episode of Patients Come First features people in the healthcare community whose work is focused on enhancing patient experience, whether through direct care, medical research, or other efforts. This episode features VDA member Dr. Cameron Roberts. You can learn more about the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association at VHHA.com, and we hope you enjoy this guest episode.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

Welcome to the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association's Patients Come First Podcast Series. Podcast episodes are available on VHS.com and on popular podcast hosting apps, including Apple Podcasts, Amazon, Spotify, and many others. We're a member of the Virginia Audio Collective, the World Podcast Network, and Podcast Health. Podcast episodes also air Sundays at 9 a.m. on 100.5 FM, 92.7 FM, and 820 a.m. across Central Virginia and 1650 a.m. in Hampton Roads. Please send questions, comments, feedback, or guest suggestions to PCFpodcast at VHJ.com. Again, that's PCFpodcast at VHJ.com. And today we're pleased to be joined by Dr. Cameron Roberts, a dentist in the Shenandoah Valley, who also serves as dental director of the Augusta Regional Dental Clinic, which is a charitable organization that provides dental care to low-income and uninsured individuals. He joins us today for a conversation about his professional journey, concerns about federal and state policy that potentially imperils Medicaid funding for dental care to disadvantaged people, the work that he does, and much more. So with that, welcome to the show, Dr. Roberts. Thanks for being with us.

SPEAKER_02 2:01

Yeah, thank you for having me. This is uh this is great. Nice to be able to talk a little bit about things that are so important to me.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

Absolutely. But we appreciate you making some time and we're just gonna dive right in. It's our custom to start these conversations by getting to know our guests a bit better. What we know about you, Dr. Roberts, is that you are originally from Utah, that you were part of a two-year church mission trip to Bolivia before completing undergraduate studies at BYU. You then attended dental school at VCU. And today you and your family live in the Shenandoah Valley, where you're a member of the team at Dental Health Associates, and you serve as dental director of the Augusta Regional Dental Clinic. Beyond those few details, what else should people know about your unique personal story?

SPEAKER_02 2:41

Yeah, like I said, I by and large grew up in Utah. My dad's a retired dentist now. He actually went to uh VCU as well. So I lived in Virginia from when I was one to five while he was doing dental school. And my little brother's actually a dentist as well. So dentistry is a part of my family. I've been in and around it literally my entire life. It's something that I I feel very deeply about because I have seen firsthand how this affects people. One of the things that kind of drove me towards dentistry is when I was serving my mission in Bolivia, one of the limiting factors on people's quality and length of life was loss of teeth. Um, you know, very, very poor dental care in significant portions of the country due to lack of funding. And it was surprising to me as a you know 19, 20, 21 year old to start to realize that, man, if you lose your teeth by like 50, like you're dead by 60, 65. And that was that was shocking to me. And so that kind of helped drive me towards, hey, this is a good place I can go to help with that. And that's something I can do to help improve people's lives. And so that was that was really fun. And I guess something else to kind of say is, you know, I I had the good fortune of meeting and marrying a Virginia girl, which is how I ended up back here, you know, and in uh in the great state of Virginia after being raised in Utah by and large.

SPEAKER_01 3:54

Well, as they say, Virginia is for lovers, and it's gotta draw and an appeal. I am not a native Virginian, but this is my second stint living in Virginia, so it does have that pull on people to bring them back. And I appreciate you sharing some perspective about your family coming from a family of dentists and that recognition you had early on, which we're going to talk about in a little bit, about the role that dental health and oral health plays in overall health. I do want to talk a little bit more about the Augusta Regional Dental Clinic, which I think ties into that notion of caring for people who may not always have access to care or insurance. As we mentioned, Dr. Roberts, you serve as dental director of the Augusta Regional Dental Clinic. You're also a private dentist in the Shenandoah Valley, as we mentioned. The Augusta Regional Dental Clinic is a not-for-profit charitable dental clinic that provides low or no cost dental care to vulnerable residents. I know it's supported by a number of organizations, um, including Augusta Health, which is a VHHA member. And I was just uh fortunately had an opportunity to visit at Augusta Health earlier this week uh during during some time in the Shenandoah Valley. But I digress. I want to talk a little bit more about the dental clinic. So if you would tell us about the work of the clinic and how it operates.

SPEAKER_02 5:10

Yeah, so it's a charitable clinic and it's um it both serves Medicaid populations. And our primary mandate was originally no low insurance and no insurance individuals to try to help kind of reinforce that safety net, you know, and and try to uh help serve some of the the most vulnerable in our population, and that's that's what the whole thing kind of grew out of. I've been involved with the clinic for about six years. Um, one of my other partners was involved with six or seven years prior to that and still still serve. So in dental health associates, we have a a deep history with the clinic. We really believe in its in its mission. We try to get people out there because it is so critical that those that are the most vulnerable have a place to get their dental care taken care of.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

And the from what I understand, the history of the clinic goes back to the 1990s, is that correct?

SPEAKER_02 5:56

Yes, yeah. Start back to the 1990s, it was part of the outreach program actually with uh Augusta Health. And the dental clinic, when that started, was kind of uh an adjunct to it. Over the years, it has become a more and more important portion of it with the expansion of coverage with the ACA and other things. The medical clinic and uh pharmacy portion ended up being phased out because they were fortunately no longer needed, and with that, the dental portion is now the the primary, almost the exclusive kind of purview of what we what we do there. So when I first started on the board, we were kind of starting to phase out the medical and pharmacy end, and as I've been on the board the last five years, it is now the primary focus. And as part of that, you know, there's been a significant expansion with our capacity to see patients, a lot more space with it. And yeah, that's kind of where we're where we're at right now.

SPEAKER_01 6:42

Well, I appreciate you giving us the backstory as well as bringing us up to date on the current state of affairs. We mentioned, and you alluded to this a few moments ago, about your mission trip to Bolivia and the realization you had as a young adult about the important role that um oral health plays in overall body health. You talked about people who in in Bolivia who didn't have access to consistent dental care leading to loss of teeth and how that could impact lifespan. You've said before that, quote, the mouth is the gateway to the body, end quote, and that oral health is deeply connected to overall health. So for people listening to this who may not have a true appreciation for how interconnected those two concepts are, I wonder if you could just talk about why dental health, oral health is so important and the implications it has for you know the broader overall bodily health.

SPEAKER_02 7:38

Absolutely. And I'm gonna kind of take two tracks on that and try to be try to be brief with it. The first is the actual physical health. You know, I get questions all the time, hey doc, why do you need my full medical history? Why do you need to know if I had a heart attack or had to knee replaced or something like that? And we have to realize that even though within the kind of the framework we have financially and politically we have separated out the mouth and rest of the body, that's not what happens physically. It is the gateway to your body. Everything you eat, everything you breathe goes through your mouth first. You know, it is it's critical for all of that. It is a massive mucosal surface that is very close to your heart and to your brain. It is an area that is very prone to infections. If you have an inflammatory disease like periodontal disease in your mouth, it is the equivalent to having an open wound the size of your the palm of your hand somewhere else in your body. That increases, you know, the the inflammation responses throughout the rest of your body. Having an abscess in your in your body is a huge indicator for overall health. Oftentimes we're the first ones that see the first signs of something like high blood pressure, anemia, things like that, because again, all of that shows up in your in your mouth, and what happens in your mouth affects the rest of your body. If you had an open oozing wound on your knee, your PCP is going to be very worried that that's gonna affect your overall health and your heart. Your mouth, if you have an open wound in your mouth, that's a lot closer physically to your heart than anything else. You know, and that's why we ask for kind of these whole body things, because what happens in our in our mouths affects the rest of it. The other thing that is critical a critical component that I think sometimes people overlook is also the social and emotional attachment that happens when you're missing teeth. One of the most rewarding things we do as dentists is restoring somebody to a confident smile, regardless of the mode in which we do that. You know, if you're missing a front tooth, it affects everything. Having a kid with crooked teeth and they've teased about it at school can be incredibly detrimental to their overall mental health as well. And being in a position where we can help somebody do some things that are both functional and aesthetic has huge knock-on effects for the rest of their life as well.

SPEAKER_01 9:41

That makes total sense, both the physical implications as well as just the emotional and social aspect of having a smile that uh that you can be comfortable with. So I appreciate you sharing that perspective. For the context of our listeners, we're recording with Dr. Roberts in early March. Just a few weeks ago, was the State of the Union address. And Dr. Roberts was a guest at that address in Washington, D.C. of U.S. Senator Tim Kane of Virginia. And that provided an opportunity to highlight what dental care looks like in the Shenandoah Valley and how potential Medicaid policy alterations, including funding levels on both the federal level and the state level, could impact access to care. For prospective, folks should remember that last year in 2025, there was a sweeping policy change under HR1, also known as the One Big Beautiful Bill, which cut significantly from Medicaid funding and also made other related policy adjustments. And that has ripple effects down to the state level as well as community level effects in terms of people's ability to qualify for coverage, whether it's through the Affordable Care Act or other programs. So given that background, Dr. Roberts, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that experience, being able to be there in the chambers of Congress to hear that address and also to share your perspective as someone who provides dental care in a in the Shenandoah Valley, which has some rural uh elements of the community, as well as someone who works at a charitable dental clinic that is providing services to disadvantaged and low-income individuals.

SPEAKER_02 11:35

Yes, absolutely. And I said I I really, I really appreciate that question. And I I was very appreciative to Senator Kane for inviting me to be there. You know, there's always a portion of going, why is a local dentist hanging out with all these, you know, powerful policymakers when you're sitting there at the Estate of the Union? But it really was because I he acknowledged, and I think a lot of us are trying to acknowledge better, that overall health and dental health are very important, that it's critical to all these other things, and we ignore the health of our mouth at our own peril. And so it was it was wonderful to be there. It was great to have to be able to bend the ear of some of these powerful policymakers for a couple of minutes to give them a perspective, my perspective on how this was affecting everybody else, and how, even though this can sometimes be a blind spot, that if we ignore this, we ignore it at our peril and it's going to have knock-on effects. So it was it was great to be able to talk with them a little bit about, hey, when we do these policies on the federal level, here's what it looks like on the ground for those of us that we're trying to take care of. And that was that was really, really great. And just to touch very briefly on kind of what this looks like, because dentistry is often seen as elective in dental in in overall healthcare. It's often the first thing people cut either from a on a policy level or on a personal pocketbook level. You know, when the economy starts to take a downturn, usually as dentists are on the front line of that, we usually know a recession's coming several months before anybody else does, because we see it in our numbers, because people think, hey, I can cut this out. I would I would tell you, you don't really want to do that. You know, eating is the last pleasure we have in life. You don't want to lose that. Having a toothache is terrible. Having that smile that you're not proud of can be really, really detrimental to other things. But when we look at these things, oftentimes we're the first things that get cut. And on the right now, on the state and federal level, dentistry for Medicaid is not a guaranteed benefit, which means oftentimes it is reliant on the funding from a state level with HB uh with you know a big beautiful bill that was it was there was drastic reductions within that bill. Right now, the state legislature is working on some things to try to mitigate some of those effects. What we look at from as a as a frontline dentist, both as a private practice practice or practitioner, and someone who's working in the in the charitable field, we're concerned about that. With the changes to the ACA that happened in that bill, from the private practice standpoint, my girls are getting, my front dad, sorry, my my staff in the front is getting a lot more calls with people going, hey, I'm losing my insurance or I've lost my insurance. Do you guys take Medicaid? You know somebody who does. Like a three to four fold increase. And that's hard because there isn't a lot of coverage for a lot of reasons with that. And on the charitable side of things, the same thing's happening. We're having people that have Medicaid that are worried if that funding's going to continue. What does that look like happening in the sliding scale? And a lot more people that are in the sliding scale, which is slightly more expensive to provide care for them within the clinic. And so as we talk as board members, we have to figure out how we can continue to see these patients and continue to fulfill our obligations that we have to the community and still be fiscally responsible enough that we can keep the doors open and keep doing the wonderful work that they are that they're doing. You know, so we're seeing it on every level as we look at these changes. There are going to be some pain points that we need to look at and talk about as we go forward. And I hope as we have these conversations with each other as a society and as and with policymakers, we can really look at a realistic overall idea of what this really looks like.

SPEAKER_01 15:05

Well, that's really important perspective. And I'm glad you had the opportunity to attend and share your insight with Senator Kane and with others, because those kinds of stories are so essential to the advocacy process. Folks who are elected leaders, whether on the state level or the federal level, um may have the best of intentions, but as with any of us, folks can only be a subject matter expert in so many things. And so hearing from people like you who are on the ground, who are interacting with patients and who, as you said, in the dental community, you can often see the foreshadowing signs of a recession before some others in the economy because you see people start to scale back on what they might see as elective or discretionary treatment services. That's really important perspective to be able to share. So I'm glad you were able to do that. And I want to thank you for doing that because even in our work here at VHHA, you know, we try to bring, and I know that your colleagues at the Virginia Dental Association do the same thing, try to bring folks into the process who, you know, can share that on-the-ground insight, that real world perspective. So it's really good that you were able to do that. Dr. Roberts, I want to thank you for spending some time with us this morning. We are nearing the conclusion of our conversation, but before we go, we do have a tradition here on the podcast to close things out by asking our guests a pair of uh mystery questions to keep things interesting. We have a list of 10. And so if you could select two numbers between one and ten, I'll ask you those corresponding surprise questions.

SPEAKER_02 16:43

Absolutely. Let's go with five and eight.

SPEAKER_01 16:45

Okay, five. This is a fun one. Tell me one unpopular opinion you hold that runs contrary to common sentiment. So a hypothetical example might be you're someone who doesn't like chocolate or doesn't like coffee or something else which is generally seen as having broad public appeal. What's your one unpopular opinion?

SPEAKER_02 17:05

My one unpopular opinion. I mean, we're we're in March, so we're looking at March madness right now. My unpopular opinion is we don't need any more teams in the big dance. In fact, we might need to reduce it down a little bit. I I like to see competitive games. I don't want to see a 18 seed get blown out by a number one seed. I'd I think maybe we need less college basketball, not more, which I'm sure makes some people cringe, but I want to see competitive stuff.

SPEAKER_01 17:27

I completely hear you. And that's interesting because on the other set side of the bracket in college football, they're trying to expand the playoff format. You know, they went from four teams to 12, and now they're talking about going to 16. So I guess it's always a moving target. But that that is, particularly this time of year, a unique perspective. So I appreciate you sharing that. And then you also selected number eight. And that question is tell me one memory from your life that whenever you think of it, it makes you smile.

SPEAKER_02 17:53

Yeah, so I'm going to touch on something that happened on my mission that I loved. So I served in Bolivia. It is a the part I served in is a very high desert. You know, 11,000 plus feet above sea level, very little rainfall, which means there's very, very little cloud cover. And I remember crystal clear like it happened yesterday. It was late at night, I was walking from one appointment to the next, and we are we're walking through this high desert plain, and there's almost no lights around. And you really understood why they called it the Milky Way. You could see tens and tens of thousands of stars in this bright streak across the sky. And it's one of those things that as modernity continues to progress, we see less and less of the night sky. And having that memory of just, oh my goodness, we are but a tiny, tiny portion of a massive universe is one of those things it is, it brings a smile to my face every time, and it also helps ground me and remind me of my own place in the universe.

SPEAKER_01 18:51

Indeed, we are but a tiny speck, but that's that's really an interesting anecdote. And I imagine you said high elevation, so probably better vantage, and also if you were in a less developed area, not as much light pollution to impede that view. So appreciate you sharing that. And with that, that's going to bring us to the close of another episode of the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association's Patients Come First podcast. If you like what you heard, please make sure to leave us a five-star view on Apple Podcast and subscribe so that you know when new episodes are available. And we want to once again thank our guest, Dr. Cameron Roberts, for joining us today. So thank you, sir. Thank you.