A happy new year to all of our members!  2010 certainly had its share of challenges, but, as the saying goes, tough times never last, but tough people do!  Let’s hope that 2011 is better and more prosperous for us all.

Your society is keeping busy.  Since the holiday party, we’ve been working on our annual Give Kids A Smile event.  We are blessed to have so many resources, and so many committed people here in our valley, who join forces and make miracles happen.  Last year we treated 174 children, delivering well over $100,000 in oral health care, in just 5 hours!  Certainly, and sadly, the need has not diminished in the last year, so the importance of this event continues to grow. 

I can’t say enough about the generosity of our partners, including the folks at Henry Schein, who are not only national sponsors, but local sponsors as well.  They even send a crew of volunteers to help out!  And of course, the UNLV School of Dental Medicine, their faculty, administration and students are first rate, providing us with a hundred dental chairs, hundreds of volunteers and a great experience.  And a new key to last year’s success was the addition of the Ortho Residency at the University of Southern Nevada, who were gracious enough to host our pre-screening.  Add in the dentists and residents from Nellis Air Force Base, and the Dental Hygienists’ Association and the hygiene students from CSN, and you see that this is a rare event, with everyone in the dental community working together.  The core of this, of course, is the participation of our members.  Your expertise, and experience, make a huge difference and make the commitment of all these resources worthwhile.  I hope you’ll contact the SNDS office and volunteer!

And speaking of Nellis AFB, our colleagues at the 99th Dental Squadron have once again invited us to join them for our February meeting.  They are working on getting a top notch speaker, and we’ll once again be meeting at the Officers’ Club on the base.  You’ll have to RSVP, as always, to ensure that we can get your through security, but it should be a great evening.  Be sure to join us on Tuesday, February 8th!

Our Membership Committee also wishes to remind you that we’re in the middle of renewal time.  Thank you to the many, many members who have already renewed, but as the deadline is approaching, our Membership Committee suggests you send in your renewal.  If you didn’t receive your notice, or are not sure if you’ve sent it in or not, please call Anthony at the Nevada Dental Association at 255-4211 for help. 

And as our members know, we have two more installments of our CE Café series coming, dinner meetings in January, the Nellis meeting in February, then back to the Gold Coast for dinner meetings in March and April, and two outstanding CE speakers in March and April.  We hope you can take advantage of all of these opportunities, we’d love to see you there!