Kornberg School of Dentistry announced plans to create a rural dentistry education center and clinic in Tamaqua, Pennsylvania. The plans were announced by State Senator Dave Argall and State Representative Jamie Barton at the Pennsylvania Oral Health Summit on Nov. 12 and 13.
These plans follow a previous announcement in July for the creation of a new rural dentistry track that is intended to be piloted at the new location. The class would accommodate around 20 students and be designed to serve patients on Medicaid and provide affordable service to the surrounding community, WVIA reported.
Students who participate in the program will be accommodated through nearby housing from the clinic that is planned to be renovated by Temple alongside the construction of the education center.
The plans for the new building await approval from Temple’s Board of Trustees to go forward with construction on the site of a former Rite Aid building in downtown Tamaqua.
Elise Fellerman, a D3 dental student at Kornberg, believes that the rural dentistry track and clinic will provide opportunities for students to pursue dental education in underserved areas.
“I think it’s a great opportunity for some students who would like to branch out and work in different areas other than Philadelphia,” Fellerman said. “I also heard that there is more of a smaller cohort that will be going to the campus, so I think that could be beneficial with getting more clinic professors looking over you.”
The new clinic is expected to open September 2026 and will be funded through Temple investment and private donations alongside Tamaqua’s participation in the City Revitalization and Improvement Zone Program.
The CRIZ program is a project administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development to support economic and job growth in areas by assisting in real estate development using tax dollars. Tamaqua was designated as a pilot zone in 2014 and is the only borough in the state in the program.
Kornberg also plans to collaborate with Lehigh Carbon Community College as part of the new clinic and program to collaboratively train six to ten students.
LCCC confirmed its involvement in high-level discussions with Kornberg for a potential collaboration, but has not made any commitments to concrete plans, a spokesperson for the college wrote in an email to The Temple News.
“At this very early stage, Lehigh Carbon Community College has not made any firm commitments or developed definite plans regarding timelines or location specifics.” the spokesperson wrote.
The new clinic and rural dentistry program is designed to respond to the lack of affordable dental healthcare for residents living in rural areas of Pennsylvania far from most dental clinics.
The clinic was planned in association with the Tamaqua Area Community Partnership, a nonprofit organization founded in 1994 to create charitable projects for community and economic development of the Tamaqua area.
TACP reached out to Temple to collaborate on a rural dentistry clinic following an announcement by Amid Ismail, Kornberg School of Dentistry’s dean, of their intentions to create a rural dentistry program at the 2023 Pennsylvania Oral Health Summit, said Micah Gursky, executive director of TACP.
The 2022 Borough of Tamaqua Community Plan outlines strategies for promoting health and wellness in the community, including dental care. The St. Lukes Tamaqua Medical Center has a Dental Care Planning Network as part of the plan to assess the needs and develop the relationships of Tamaqua and the surrounding counties for dental care.
St. Lukes also has two rural residency programs for rural psychiatry and viral family medicine with 20 learners, Gursky said.
Gursky hopes that with the new clinic, Tamaqua can expand opportunities for rural based education.
“[The St. Lukes rural residency programs] really built our community’s reputation as a place for learning and education and then particularly for health,” Gursky said. “The clinic itself is going to provide access for patients in our community and our region who currently don’t have access.”
Gursky hopes that the relationship between Tamaqua and Temple established with the clinic plans will encourage further partnerships in the arts and open the door to more educational collaborations.
