Adahara knew she was lucky to receive all the cleft treatment she needed from an early age. She's training to become a Smile Train partner because she knows not every child with a cleft is so lucky.
Thanks to Dr. Cuadros — and Smile Train — having a cleft on the Navajo reservations of New Mexico is no longer a sentence to a life of isolation and sickness.
It broke Dr. Meza's heart to see his patients with clefts struggle to eat, speak, sleep, or even feel good about themselves because of poor dental health. So he partnered with Smile Train to do something about it.
When Dr. Dau started as a Smile Train partner, he knew children with clefts were often abandoned or put in orphanages. As an orphan himself, he comes to work each day determined that no other child should experience that pain.