Peripatetic Shawn Oprisiu has been everywhere, man—but her latest stop, the Kansas City metropolitan area, is where she’s truly making her mark in public health, bringing mobile dental hygiene to kids in two states.
SHAWN OPRISIU has moved around—a lot. Her easy laugh and grounded disposition lend themselves to gracefully weathering transitions; her surroundings may change, but she remains steadfast. The 52-year-old director of dental outreach for Swope Health in and around Kansas City, Missouri, has held her Registered Dental Hygienist license in five states, in part because of her husband’s corporate career—she married her high school sweetheart 25 years ago—but also to support her son’s ice hockey aspirations while he was growing up. “I’m very independent—very. ‘Needy’ is not a word in my vocabulary,” Oprisiu says with an infectious chuckle.
The native Michigander grew up in Westland, a working-class suburb of Detroit. Her father, a former marine who attended trucking school on the G.I. Bill, was in and out of work due to the trucking industry’s volatility; her mother, a typically stay-at-home mom with a high-school education, would go back to work to make ends meet when there wasn’t enough to put food on the table. They didn’t have much in a material sense, but it was a loving home. “My parents were my biggest supporters—especially my mom, who was always in my corner,” Oprisiu says. “I always wanted bigger and better, and my parents encouraged that.”
Studious by nature, Oprisiu graduated from Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan, with an associate’s degree in dental hygiene in 1998. (“In those days, you had to do nursing or teaching, but I don’t do well with blood,” she says. “Teeth I thought I could handle.”) She would go on to work in private practice for about a decade, moving from Michigan to Tennessee and then Iowa, dipping her toes into public health along the way. “At that time, I was so burned out on private practice. I was ready to work in a different space,” she says. “Working in public health was like a breath of fresh air. It is the total opposite of private practice on every level.”
Studious by nature, Oprisiu graduated from Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan, with an associate’s degree in dental hygiene in 1998. (“In those days, you had to do nursing or teaching, but I don’t do well with blood,” she says. “Teeth I thought I could handle.”) She would go on to work in private practice for about a decade, moving from Michigan to Tennessee and then Iowa, dipping her toes into public health along the way. “At that time, I was so burned out on private practice. I was ready to work in a different space,” she says. “Working in public health was like a breath of fresh air. It is the total opposite of private practice on every level.”
One of her first roles as a public health dental hygienist was with a nonprofit, Mid-Iowa Community Action, which provides services and advocacy to poor families in central Iowa. There she’d administer screenings and fluoride to mothers of young children living in poverty. “I found my passion in public health and found it with children,” she says. “Even more than 20 years later, I’m still driven to provide access to care for these kids. The system is not set up for them. Parents struggle to navigate the system and gain access to care.”
“Even more than 20 years later, I’m still driven to provide access to care for needy kids. The system is not set up for them.”
In 2015, her family moved to Kansas in a fifth relocation due to her husband’s job. They bought a farm in Baldwin City, a tiny town 15 miles south of the college town of Lawrence. “When we moved to Kansas, my one stipulation was that we were going to buy a farm. I wanted land and animals,” says Oprisiu, who now has two dogs, two roosters and some 20 hens. “I would much rather hang with my animals than with people on the weekend. It’s so nice to go sit on my deck and listen to the frogs and crickets and just chill.”
Her first full-time job in the Sunflower State was teaching public health and ethics at Manhattan Area Technical College’s dental hygienist program. She taught for two years before the RDH program was shut down for lack of funding—a sad but not uncommon story in public health (see “The Great Hygiene Crisis“). Undeterred, she obtained an extended care permit (ECP), which enables RDHs to provide oral care to patients outside the dental office, and built outreach programs for various Federally Qualified Health Centers and Rural Health Clinics in the Kansas City metropolitan area from the ground up.
In 2020, Oprisiu connected with Dr. Megan Krohn, executive director of dental services at Swope Health, a regional health care provider that has served western Missouri and eastern Kansas since 1969. Swope was looking for a new director for its dental outreach program. For the better part of a decade, it had deployed a cumbersome model requiring the staff to move equipment to an on-site location and lug it all back at the end of the day, limiting them to treating only about 300 children per year.
Oprisiu had a vision. She reinvigorated and reimagined the operation as Swope’s new outreach director. Her team would hit the ground running aboard their new Mobile Dental Unit (MDU), developing new community partnerships, doubling their accounts and servicing schoolchildren—many of whom had never seen a dentist—in two states four days a week.
The MDU, a 2020 Winnebago (left), is equipped with two fully plumbed dental chairs, an Acteon Pano machine and a group of specialists who handle X-rays, dental cleaning and helping eligible students sign up for or renew their Medicaid benefits. (If they don’t qualify for Medicaid, Swope offers a sliding fee schedule.) “I am most proud of my current team of rock star women who work their butts off for the children in our community,” she says. “I cultivated a team that has true passion for helping the students we serve, as well as a positive outlook, which helps both the team and the kiddos.”
Under Oprisiu’s leadership, Swope’s outreach program now serves more than 85 locations, and in the 2023-24 school year provided preventive dental services to approximately 2,800 children. Many of these youths live in households below the poverty line, have special needs or are ESL students (one school’s student body, for example, speaks more than 20 languages).
In 2023, Swope incorporated teledentistry into its outreach model, which has been pivotal in getting kids necessary follow-up treatments. In Missouri, which permits dental hygienists to practice as an extension of dentistry, the RDH onboard can perform routine care and gather data- intraoral photos, X-rays, cleanings, fluoride and sealants—which are sent back to one of Swope’s dentists at one of their nine brick-and-mortar dental clinics. This asynchronous telehealth model allows the dentist to examine all patient data and advise on a treatment plan and whether a clinical appointment or even a follow-up visit from the MDU is warranted.
“What’s nice about preventive dentistry is that every kid gets the exact same treatment,” Oprisiu says. “This model helps get kids treatment who wouldn’t otherwise have access.” The MDU team can treat as many as 35 kids a day at one elementary school. This model also gives the children and their parents or guardians more agency in deciding when and where they’d like to schedule follow-ups. As a result, Swope is seeing 20 percent more dental patients within its clinics. In early 2025, Swope will receive a second Winnebago, donated by a local church and valued at $500,000, which will enable the team to service about 100 additional schools every year.
“I am most proud of my current team of rock star women who work their butts off for the children in our community. I cultivated a team that has true passion for helping the students we serve, as well as a positive outlook, which helps both the team and the kiddos.”
It’s no surprise that Oprisiu’s commitment has led her to pursue a master’s in public health from the University of Missouri; she is slated to graduate next summer. “It’s a lot to juggle, but I love it. I’m learning the background of public health, and it’s helping in my day-to-day work,” she says.
Her goal is to get back into teaching. “I feel I’ve learned a lot over my years of practicing dental hygiene, and it would be a shame not to share what I’ve learned. Public health is amazing, and there are so many avenues for dental hygienists to choose other than private practice.”
Our Hygienist of the Year honor celebrates the distinguished legacy and indispensable contributions of dental hygienists worldwide. Each year, Incisal Edge will shine a spotlight on the inspirational and influential power of hygienists who are changing dentistry for the better and making a positive impact on their communities in unique, noteworthy ways.
Photography by Alison Barnes Martin
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