Spotlight on Dr. Frederic Barnett of Project HOME

Foundation for Endodontics’ & U.S. Endo Partners’ 2021 Domestic Access to Care Grantee  

You don’t have to leave our own zip code to see the desperate need for our services.
This initiative is changing lives. – Dr. Frederic Barnett 

The Foundation’s first domestic outreach pilot program was launched in 2018 in North Philadelphia through partnerships with Einstein Medical Center’s Endodontic Program and Project HOME, a 30-year-old nonprofit comprehensively focused on ending homelessness and alleviating poverty with services ranging from housing and adult education to healthcare, after school, and college access.  

Dr. Frederic Barnett, Chairman of the Maxwell S. Fogel Department of Dental Medicine at Einstein leads this effort. Project HOME is staffed on a part-time basis by an endodontic resident and faculty member from Einstein’s I.B. Bender Division of Endodontics, Department of Dental Medicine.  

Until now Dr. Barnett has provided everything the clinic needed to treat cases. When COVID interfered with the clinic’s ability to provide assistants for the residents volunteering at the clinic, Barnett rolled up his sleeves to take their place.     

 “At some point the masks are coming off, and you see people’s smiles. There’s a new level of self-awareness and self-respect, and more self-confidence when you have teeth that people can see. What better way to market what we do?” 

“The grant funds don’t cover any of the other overhead costs, but we can continue to do a significant amount of pro bono procedures at the Project HOME clinic, and probably 10 times that amount for the same population here in our endo department,” Barnett adds.  

“The Foundation funding has made a huge difference, adds Mary Jo Kasenchak D.M.D., a staff dentist at Project HOME.  “The patients here just cannot afford a root canal most of the time, so it’s really devastating to pull a tooth when it could absolutely have been saved. It’s incredible to be able to take that burden of cost off people who already live with that burden every day and make it just about what’s best for their health, instead of what they can afford.”   

Project HOME’s nine-operatory dental clinic, integrated with medical care, is now fully equipped with a microscope and CBCT. More than 30 percent of residents live under the federal poverty line – twice the national average. 

Project HOME, Philadelphia: Foundation for Endodontics US Access to Care 2022 from Foundation for Endodontics on Vimeo.