Dentsply Sirona, Smile Train Mark Milestone
On World Cleft Awareness Day, the partners celebrate their 7,000th enabled cleft surgery and, for the first time, share the economic dimension of their collective impact: an estimated $470 million in lifetime value generated and more than 45,000 years of healthy life restored.
In recognition of World Cleft Awareness Day, Dentsply Sirona and Smile Train are celebrating a major milestone in their partnership—the 7,000th cleft surgery enabled since 2021—and sharing new data that quantifies its impact well beyond the operating room. For Dentsply Sirona, this work is part of the company’s mission and sustainability strategy, “BEYOND: Taking Action for a Brighter World.”
Behind that single number sits a wider story the partners are telling for the first time. Alongside the surgeries themselves, Dentsply Sirona and Smile Train are now sharing the long-term economic and human impact of this work as clear evidence that restoring a child’s smile reverberates through families, communities, and economies for decades.
Impact That Outlasts the Operating Room
Using the framework of Smile Train’s Economic Impact Report, the surgeries enabled by Dentsply Sirona between 2021 and 2025 are projected to generate more than $470 million in economic value over the patients’ lifetimes.1 The figure reflects a straightforward truth: A child who can eat, speak, and breathe normally can go to school, find work, and contribute fully to their family and community—opportunities an untreated cleft can quietly foreclose.
The same surgeries are estimated to have averted more than 45,000 disability-adjusted life years (DALYs)—a standard global health measure in which one DALY represents one year of healthy life lost to disease or disability. Put simply, this work has restored the equivalent of more than 45,000 years of healthy living to children who might otherwise have spent them struggling to eat, speak, or breathe.
“Behind every one of these 7,000 surgeries is a child who can now eat, speak, and smile without barriers, and a family whose future just changed,” said Rainer Seemann, VP, Chief Clinical Officer at Dentsply Sirona. “What moves me most is that this is not charity in the traditional sense. By equipping local clinicians with digital solutions and training, we’re building care that takes root in the community and stays there. That’s the kind of impact our people are proud to stand behind.”
An Impact Built to Last
Founded in 2021, the five-year partnership between Dentsply Sirona and Smile Train is focused on advancing digital cleft care globally, combining Dentsply Sirona’s digital dental technologies and know-how with Smile Train’s global network of trained local providers. Rather than delivering care through short-term surgical missions, the partners invest in local clinicians and equipment so that safe, high-quality, comprehensive cleft care is available in communities year-round.
Dentsply Sirona’s digital solutions are central to that durability. Digital imaging, intraoral scanning, and 3D printing equipment like Primescan, Primeprint, and Axeos help local surgeons assess each cleft and plan with precision, while digital records follow a child across years of comprehensive care—from surgery to speech therapy and orthodontics—so the right specialist sees the full picture.
“When you give a child cleft care, you give them back their childhood,” said Susannah Schaefer, President and CEO of Smile Train. “On top of that, you give a community a future contributor. The economic impact we’re sharing today puts a value on how a healed cleft changes a life, and changed lives change the world around them.”
The milestone is being marked on World Cleft Awareness Day, observed July 20, which spotlights the diverse experiences of the global cleft community and the importance of comprehensive medical, emotional, and social support. Cleft conditions are common—impacting roughly one in every 700 children worldwide—yet remain widely misunderstood, and in many regions, timely, comprehensive care is still difficult to access even though proven solutions exist.
REFERENCE
- Economic value estimates are based on the methodology described in Smile Train’s Economic Impact Report: Smile Train at 25: $69 Billion in Impact (May 2024), page 10. Available here.
About Dentsply Sirona
Dentsply Sirona is the world’s largest diversified manufacturer of professional dental products and technologies, with over a century of innovation and service to the dental industry and patients worldwide. Dentsply Sirona develops, manufactures, and markets a comprehensive solutions offering, including dental and oral health products as well as other consumable medical devices under a strong portfolio of world-class brands. Dentsply Sirona’s innovative products provide high-quality, effective, and connected solutions to advance patient care and deliver better and safer dental care. Dentsply Sirona is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Company’s shares are listed in the United States on Nasdaq under the symbol XRAY.
Visit www.dentsplysirona.com for more information about Dentsply Sirona and its products.
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