Ten-year-old Myranda Harris couldn’t leave the dentist’s office on Friday saying, “Look, Mom, no cavities!”

She actually had two.

Still, the Ridgewood Elementary School fifth-grader had a reason to smile. Her cavities were small, and they were found and filled quickly, as part of a program known as “Give Kids A Smile!”

The program included nearly 2,000 events nationwide on Friday as part of National Children’s Dental Health Month. “Give Kids A Smile!” is about more than children hopping into the dentist’s chair and opening wide. It’s about dental practices opening wide their doors for young patients who might otherwise be closed out of the dental care system.

The program, now in its eighth year, is a free clinic for children who do not receive dental care.

“So many children don’t get dental care,” said Jasper L. Lewis Jr., pediatric dentist and spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry. “Part of it is education. Certainly part of it is economics.”

Last year, more than 22,000 children received more than $2 million in free dental care as part of “Give Kids A Smile!” in North Carolina, which was named the leading program in the country by the American Dental Association.

On Friday, the East Central Dental Society scheduled more than 100 children for appointments at the at Eastern Orthodontics and PediatricDentistry, which hosted Greenville’s “Give Kids A Smile!”

Six-year-old Mahogani Green had two of her baby teeth pulled. Her mother, Zina, said she welcomed “Give Kids A Smile!” as a chance to catch up on her daughter’s dental health needs, which she says sometimes take a back seat to other expenses.

“I’m not saying that teeth are not important,” Ms. Green said, “but some things have to come before it, being a single parent like I am.”

Dentist Billy Williams, who co-chairs Greenville’s “Give Kids A Smile!” said dentists nationwide are seeing patients forego dental care because they are struggling financially.

“I think people don’t put oral health as a high priority as overall health,” Williams said, “and the economy’s making that worse, no question.

“With kids, it’s really sad because some of the problems if you could catch them earlier would be much easier to deal with.”

“Give Kids A Smile!” co-chair Lee Lewis, a specialist in both orthodontics and pediatric dentistry, said parents who are out of work find themselves without dental insurance and without the ability to pay for services. While some qualify for government-sponsored programs such as Health Choice or Medicaid, those programs are facing their own financial problems.

Medicaid reimbursements paid to participating dentists have been reduced, Lewis said, prompting some dentists to refuse Medicaid patients because their practices were losing money in trying to treat them.

“With the economy the way it is, there are going to be more and more people entering these programs,” he said. “That’s one of the main reasons for looking at bringing a dental school to East Carolina — is to help provide care for these people.”

It was at an earlier “Give Kids A Smile!” event that Jasper Lewis first approached state representatives with the idea of a dental school at ECU.

N.C. Rep. Edith Warren remembers the excitement in the room as Lewis began to outline what he and several community leaders had envisioned.

“We kind of jumped up and down because we recognized the great need that is there,” Warren said.

Warren, who served as principal of Farmville’s Sam D. Bundy School for nearly 20 years, has seen the need first hand. She remembers poor children suffering through toothaches at school.

“You also knew if there was a child in the first, second or third grade that had a dental problem, there was a family at home that also had those issues,” she said.

Warren is looking forward to the opening of the school, which expects to enroll its first students in 2011. The school plans to focus on North Carolina’s under-served communities, establishing clinics in areas where access to dental care is scarce.

“That is absolutely critically important — to have dentists in eastern North Carolina, particularly some of these rural counties,” said U.S. Rep. Walter Jones, of North Carolina’s 3rd District, who was in Greenville on Friday to attend “Give Kids A Smile!” “Too many times the rural people are not receiving what they should.”

Myranda’s mother, Sherell Harris, is from one of those areas. She grew up in Gates County, which has been without a dentist since the county’s lone dental practice moved to Edenton.

Dr. Gregory Chadwick, associate dean for planning and extramural affairs at ECU’s School of Dentistry, said the school’s Community Service Learning Clinical Centers should help change that. The school has already announced plans for sites in Ahoskie and Elizabeth City in eastern North Carolina and Sylva in the western part of the state. The school still has seven sites to place and is looking at a number of counties that have few or even no dental practices.

“I think we’re going to have the ideal opportunity in the rural areas because we’ll have a dental presence out there where there is none,” said Chadwick, who was president of the ADA when “Give Kids A Smile!” was conceived. “We really want to go out and improve the health of the people in these areas.”

Jasper Lewis said “Give Kids A Smile!” is about improving overall health quality as well, despite the name that seems to suggests a focus on pearly whites.

“Children that have dental disease, have pain,” Lewis said. “They’re not smiling children. If we can get them out of pain, if we can get rid of some of those infections, if we can make them literally be healthier, that’s where the smile comes from.

“It’s nothing to do with cosmetics. It has to do with health.”

Contact Kim Grizzard at kgrizzard@reflector.com or at (252) 329-9578.