NMDA Journal Fall 2019

nmdental.org 21 how you could help. You can make mouth- pieces for youth sports teams. If you don’t know where to start on your own, there are programs that can do the screening and recruiting for you. Reach out to the Donated Dental Services of the New Mexico Dental Association Foundation and they can send you a patient that has both the dental and financial need for a helping hand, and then it can be completely up to you if and how you want to help them. My point is that, if you are like me, you know how special a profession we have, and you would like to pay it forward, but you are not quite sure how. If you take a minute to ap- preciate where you are and think about how to show that appreciation you will see that the possibilities are really endless of how much you can do right in the comfort of your own hometown and practice to make a large difference in people’s lives, one smile at a time. So, let’s all make this a goal in our young careers to not put it off until later, and the cumulative effect of everyone doing a lit- tle over the span of our careers will be truly life-changing for us and our patients.