The Mobile Care Health Project run by the Office for Social Ministry and St. Francis Healthcare System of Hawaii is winding down after 12 years of providing free dental care to more than 18,500 patients on the Big Island.

Community health centers will be taking over the program in June, with the transfer of services and assets already under way.

"The Mobile Care Health Project's intent has always been to be a temporary solution to meeting the acute and urgent needs for those in need of dental care until the community health centers were ready to assume this service," said Carol Ignacio, diocesan director of the Office for Social Ministry of the Roman Catholic Church's Honolulu Diocese.

Since its start, the project has provided $1.6 million in uncompensated dental care to children, the physically disabled, the mentally ill, frail elderly residents, the homeless and others who were able to receive treatment at its two fully equipped Winnebago vans. Services include acute and episodic dental care, oral health assessments, education, referrals and patient advocacy.

This month, one of the vans will be transferred to the Bay Clinic, which plans to start services in the Ka'u District and later expand to Hilo.

The clinic already operates from sites in East Hawai'i and in 2003 started offering dental services in its stationary clinic in Kea'au.

Bay Clinic executive director Paul Strauss said the van "will enable us to expand our dental services to all of the East Hawai'i communities we serve."

The West Hawaii Community Health Center will open a stationary pediatric dental clinic in Kealakekua this year and will assume ownership of the second Mobile Care van in July. In addition, the Hamakua Health Center will acquire a new van so it can begin dental services in Honoka'a and Kohala.

In 1997, before the Mobile Care Health Project began, there were no dental chairs in community health centers on the Big Island, according to a news release. By July of this year there will be 15 dental chairs at seven community health center sites.

"The Mobile Care Health Project is an excellent example of the Franciscan way of itinerancy," said Sister Agnelle Ching, chief executive officer of St. Francis Healthcare System of Hawaii. "We worked to fill the need for dental services for the uninsured and underinsured, and now that the community health centers are able to assume these services, we will be moving on."

On Jan. 23 — Feast Day of Mother Marianne — St. Francis Healthcare System recognized the Mobile Care Health Project with the 2008 Mother Marianne Award for the program's work and for epitomizing the St. Francis mission of creating healthy communities. The award is named in honor of Mother Marianne Cope, who brought the Sisters of St. Francis to Hawai'i in 1883 to care for those with Hansen's disease.

The Mobile Care Health Project also worked with dental health advocates on Maui and Kaua'i in 1998 to form the Tri-County Oral Health Task Force to address the critical shortage of dentists serving low-income populations.

Due in part to their advocacy efforts and those of the Hawaii Primary Care Association, the Legislature passed a community service dental license bill in 2004 that allows dentists licensed on the Mainland to practice in community health clinics in the state. The legislation enabled dentists from the University of Iowa and Columbia University to join Hamakua Health Center and the Mobile Care Health Project to provide services to 175 children ages 2 to 13 as part of the "Healthy Children, Healthy Smiles" keiki dental project in 2007.

Funding and other support for the Mobile Care Health Project has come from the state, Hawai'i County, the HMSA Foundation, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Hawaii Island United Way, the Hawaii Dental Service Foundation, the Thomas J. Long Foundation, Catholic parishes of Hawai'i, and individual donors.