Ground Broken On Dental School Renovation

Ground was broken Friday on a more than 40 million dollar renovation to the University of Louisville School of Dentistry.The improvements will modernize patient treatment facilities and increase class sizes by 50 percent.Executive Vice President of Health Affairs Larry Cook says the improvements are needed given Kentucky's poor record for oral health."We do terribly as a state in terms of dental parameters," he says. "Whether you talk about the number of people without access to dental care, whether you talk about the incidents of caries in our children and I am told Kentucky leads the nation in toothlessness."The school moved into its current home downtown in 1970, and few upgrades to infrastructure have been done since."It's obviously going to enhance our modernization, our patient flow-through—it'll enhance the number of patients we can see. In terms of students, we're basically increasing the class size by 50%," says Cook.The project is expected to take two years to complete.