The first time I shadowed a dentist, I realized something nobody really tells you: a tooth is never just a tooth. You can tell so much about a kid from their mouth — what they eat, how they sleep, whether anyone's been there to teach them.”
I'm a high school student in California. I host a podcast called The Healthcare Report, where I get to sit down with doctors, dentists, and researchers and ask them the questions I actually want answers to. I volunteer at Kaiser Permanente. I help out with food and clothing drives around the Bay Area. None of that is special — but the more I do, the more I see how unevenly basic care reaches the kids who need it most.
My family has roots in Mumbai. Visiting there, I started noticing kids my cousins' age with cavities so bad they couldn't really chew. Kids who had never owned a toothbrush. That stuck with me. So this summer I'm partnering with the Rotary Club of Mumbai to run an oral health camp — kits, screenings, and the kind of basic education most of us got from a parent or a school nurse and never thought twice about.
