Our History
The clinic started with a two-chair operation and one employee in the basement
of West End United Methodist Church. In 1998, Interfaith Dental Clinic moved
into its own building at 1721 Patterson Street. The clinic has 10 operatories,
16 employees and state-of-the-art equipment.
Founders Bio
Dr. Thomas S. Underwood has spent more than three decades providing humanitarian
service to people in need of dental care.
Dr. Underwood first volunteered overseas. He spent a month—including Christmas
Eve 1975—volunteering in a dental clinic in an Israeli kibbutz. Then only five
years out of dental school, young Dr. Underwood felt compelled to serve, and his
humanitarian calling took him around the globe for nearly 20 years to volunteer
from Jamaica and Honduras to Kenya and Zambia.
"Then I realized how many people in my own state had worse oral health than the
people I was treating outside the U.S.," said Dr. Underwood. "So I thought we
ought to do something right here, in a setting where we could follow up with
patients and offer comprehensive dental care."
With support from the Nashville Dental Society and the outreach commission of
the West End United Methodist Church, Dr. Underwood founded the Nashville
Interfaith Dental Clinic in 1994. The clinic's original home was in the church's
basement.
"It started in a broom closet," he laughed. "It was a big closet, though, with
room for two chairs." The IFDC provides comprehensive dental care on a sliding
scale to working low-income families who don't have dental insurance.
In 1998, the IFDC moved into a new facility with 10 operatories and a $1.6
million annual budget. Dr. Underwood continues to serve on the clinic's board of
directors.
"In the past 13 years, thanks to Dr. Underwood's passion and commitment, the
Interfaith Dental Clinic has grown from a small, part-time clinic located in a
church basement to a dental program that owns its own 7,500 square foot
facility, has 16 employees and uses 200 volunteers; and provides
comprehensive, affordable dental care to more than 1,200 patients each year,"
said Dr. Rhonda Switzer-Nadasdi, IFDC Executive Director.
In the late 1990s, Dr. Underwood's humanitarian efforts expanded outward from
Music City, USA, to help children statewide covered by the TennCare Medicaid
program gain access to dental care with "carve out" funding dedicated to oral
health care. Dr. Underwood worked for more than 10 years with state legislators
and TennCare oversight committee members to develop the dental care model that
now has more than 850 dentists statewide treating TennCare children—more than
660,000 enrollees from birth to age 20 since it launched in October of 2002. The
program has been recognized nationally as a model program for other states.
"Through 12 years of work, he was able to carve out the funding for the dental
program from the total TennCare budget and implement a single payor system,"
said state Sen. Roy Herron (D-Dresden). "He was able to establish a large panel
of competent dentists where no child under the age of 21 was more than 30 miles
away from appropriate dental care. … He was able to convince others in and out
of the dental profession of the humanitarian need."