25 faces: Leaders fighting HIV/AIDS in Colorado

5 Mary Salsich

An important part of health starts in the mouth, especially for people living with HIV/AIDS. Well Mary Salsich and the good people at Howard Dental Center are helping the community one tooth at a time.

Dentistry is important for a healthy lifestyle for anyone living with, or without, HIV/AIDS; a lesson learned by Salsich, 61, when she began working at HDC as the development director four years ago. Throughout her life, she had acquaintances who contracted HIV/AIDS and experienced it through the news, but this job has given her plenty of experience in both HIV/AIDS work and the world of dentistry.

As development director, Salsich is a jack-of-all-trades. Her primary goal is to raise funds for Howard Dental, which is a non-profit organization that provides dental work to those living with HIV/AIDS of all ages. But her job requires that she meet donors, organize awareness events, organize newsletters, market events and send grants to foundations for funding.

Salsich’s work helps Howard Dental to provide affordable dental work. As many in our society know, dental health is often put on the back burner. Health insurance companies usually do not include dental without an added cost. So Howard Dental helps with sliding scale pricing based on income and the federal poverty scale, which translates to plenty of patients paying nothing, or close to it, for their dental work.

At the end of the day, Salsich’s passion with in non-profit work is education. She acknowledges that stigma and attitudes towards the HIV/AIDS community are still in need of change.

Even as an HIV-negative woman, Salsich has experienced the stigma just by telling people the line of work that she does. She sees that people diagnosed with HIV/AIDS are treated differently even though they should be treated the same in society. Although people are not as vocal as when HIV/AIDS first came about, she still sees the covert ways people treat others.

So do not let price stop you or others from seeking professional dentistry, because Howard Dental and Mary Salsich are making affordable oral care a reality.