Phillip Kemp

Founder, Hope Smiles

In 2005, Dr. Phillip Kemp decided he needed to do something about the growing unmet dental needs of his Tennessee community. He founded Hope Smiles to develop and provide sustainable, community-based dental delivery models that serve populations with more than episodic care for lasting change.

Dr. Kemp knew that to increase access to quality oral health care long-term would require inspiring new dental students to care about the communities around them. He began by partnering locally with the University of Tennessee and Meharry Medical College School of Dentistry to mentor dental students with leadership and practice management strategies. For dental students, few programs of its kind existed at the time.

Through the years, Hope Smiles has built a global community of leaders to restore hope through dentistry. Current programs include mobile dental clinics, Hope Smiles Uganda, Smile Tennessee and Hope Smiles Dental Center providing care to uninsured patients in Nashville. These unique programs go beyond palliative care to give patients access to transformational treatments, such as implants and surgical reconstruction, and dentists gain experience performing additional skills.

Nearly 20 years later, Hope Smiles fills an entire building and is working with the State of Tennessee to build and pilot a clinical model designed to self-sustain by educating dental students, while serving those most in need. Dr. Kemp mentors dental students each year, offering experiences and guidance rooted in empathy for the people they serve and developing deep, long-lasting relationships through their work.

Dentistry has changed a lot in 30 years, from insurance and the growth of DSOs (dental service organizations) to the cost of education, which is hugely cumbersome to young dentists trying to buy a practice today. Many are going into nonprofit to try and get student loan debt paid down. We’re hoping this change in the entry point of dentistry will attract more people to this career who wouldn’t have considered it 10 years ago.

– Dr. Phillip Kemp

More about the work Dr. Kemp leads with Hope Smiles

Quarterly outreach events deliver oral care to hundreds of people
Two- or three-day clinics in partnership with many other types of health care organizations
Private dental practitioners who volunteer their offices for a day and serve 10-15 people.
Patients may pay on a sliding scale, incur more affordable fees or even nothing at all thanks to subsidies through the state partnership.
Since the inception of Hope Smiles, Dr. Kemp's team has provided dental care for more than 31,000 people across the U.S., Haiti and Uganda totaling nearly $3,000,000 in treatment value.