KINGSPORT, Tenn. (WJHL) – Expansion plans are moving forward for the University of Tennessee Health Science Center’s Kingsport Dental Clinic of the Appalachian Highlands.
“We got a 21,000 square foot space to work with, and so we want to do it right,” Ken Tilashalski, the Dean of the UT Health Science Center College of Dentistry, said.
Tilashalski said the Advanced Education in General Dentistry program has been approved for the site and will be launched in July 2026.
“These are folks that have already finished dental school,” Tilashalski said. “It’ll help us just see more patients do more procedures, and again, expose these folks to the area.
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“So, they come to Kingsport and see how beautiful it is. They may choose to relocate there.”
Tilashalski also said UT and the City of Kingsport are looking to construct more clinic spaces in the building for students.
Kingsport City Manager Chris McCartt said the city bought the building in the Spring and plans to use similar funding methods for the construction.
“We were very fortunate in the first phase to receive a lot of money from private donations, and that really fueled the build-out of the clinic,” McCartt said. “We were then were very, thankful and appreciative of the fact that the state of Tennessee and Governor Bill Lee’s office gave a 6.5 million. So not only did that allow us to secure the property, the acquisition of the property, but it also provided the dollars necessary to begin looking at this second phase.”
“We’re going to need those dollars, we may need additional state dollars, and we’re definitely going to need more private dollars to continue to fund this, to get it to the level that Dean Tilashalski talked about.”
Tilashalski said currently, four UT students report to the Kingsport clinic for two-week rotations. The site is also used by students at East Tennessee State University and, beginning in January, Northeast State Community College.
Tilashalski said the hope is that fourth-year students at UT will be able to live in Kingsport for an entire year.
“We hope to have a more major presence there in July 2027,” Tilashalski said. “That’ll be the start of a bigger group of students there, with the hope of having potentially 40 or 50 students through their entire fourth year there.”
McCartt said the city is looking into how to provide housing for those students which will best fits their lifestyles.
“The reality is we have 26, 27, 28-year-old students coming here, many of which are beginning a family and the idea of going into a dorm is probably not what they are thinking about,” McCartt said.
McCartt also said students coming and staying can help fill the need for dentists in rural areas in the region.
“If we can keep these individuals here, then we have an opportunity to raise the overall level of public health significantly, and maybe it’s not just in East Tennessee,” McCartt said. “Maybe it’s also in Southwest Virginia, Eastern Kentucky, and Western North Carolina.
“The goal here is that we’re training these individuals to fill these gaps that are beginning to be created throughout East Tennessee, but also through Appalachia.”
Construction on the building that houses the dental clinic is expected to start next year.
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