Dentist favored by NBA, NFL players says inequity in dental care leads to dental anxiety for athletes from poor backgrounds

• Cosmetic dentist Dr. Amira Ogunleye has a clientele that includes high-profile professional athletes.
• Ogunleye says many athletes suffer from dental anxiety due to a lack of proper care from childhood.
• Ogunleye has built trust with her celebrity clients due to her own background.

For professional athletes, maintaining physical health is central to their responsibilities, but one aspect that often goes overlooked is oral health.

Athletes are more likely to struggle with oral health than the average American adult, according to The American Association of Orthodontists. Their study showed that 49% of athletes had untreated tooth decay, and most of them had early signs of gum inflammation.

Dr. Amira Ogunleye, a cosmetic dentist who co-owns her own dental firm "Beautiful Smiles" in South Florida, regularly operates on high-profile figures in sports and entertainment, including LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Osi Umenyiora, and Teddy Bridgewater. She's seen the struggles and fears associated with athletes' dental care up close.

"You could have a 6-foot-10 guy in your chair, and he is terrified," Ogunleye told Insider. "No matter how 'manly' these men are, once they get in that room, it's like they're no longer the name. They're a patient who has dental anxieties. They're a patient who has concerns."

Those anxieties are escalated even further among minority athletes who come from poorer backgrounds.

Dental care is disproportionately less available to Black and Hispanic children in the US, according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), with 17% of children from low-income households having untreated cavities in their primary teeth, which is three times the percentage of children from higher-income households.

"A lot of individuals, especially in the brown and Black communities, have not had regular access to dental care," Ogunleye said. "A lot of them I found had really bad experiences one way or another growing up, so there's just been this fear, and it leads a lot of people to put it off until it becomes really bad."

The lack of dental care among minorities parallels another systematic reality in dentistry that Ogunleye has seen up close: the lack of opportunities for minorities in the dental industry.

Research by Maxine Feinberg, president of the American Dental Association (ADA), shows that more than 70% of all practicing dentists in the US are white, and more than 60% of students and faculty at dental schools are also white. Less than 5% were Black in all three categories.

The one category that Blacks led was the prevalence of untreated dental care among adolescents and adults.

Ogunleye believes that these two conditions are intertwined. As an Egyptian American woman, she has had to overcome the obstacles of the industry to help her clients address their oral health.

"I always knew that I am a young Black woman in a field that is dominated mostly by white men," Ogunleye said. "I've always felt like I had to over-perform because I was being judged."

Ogunleye graduated from Howard University College of Dentistry at the age of 23, becoming the youngest individual to earn a doctorate from the program. But even with her historic credentials, she suffered emotional devastation due to her race when she was looking to purchase her first dental practice.

"I started to get phone calls at that practice, and they would ask 'is the new doctor Black?'" Ogunleye said. "I remember breaking down in my car one day crying hysterically because I knew racism existed, but I didn't understand it like this, like, I'm still a licensed doctor. And that was a big wake-up call for me. It led me to believe that, as much as it hurt me, it also made me feel like 'okay, I have to be so on top of my stuff.'"

That motivation, combined with a work ethic instilled by her father, led Ogunleye to take a perfectionist approach to her work as a dentist.

That approach has earned her honorary awards in dental research by the Washington D.C Dental Society, the New York Dental Society, and the American Dental Association. In 2019, she was selected by Legacy Magazine as one of the "50 Most Powerful Black Leaders in Business and Industry."

Those accolades and her perfectionist reputation are the key draws that have allowed her to build a clientele of accomplished athletes who share similar mentalities in their approach to their sport.

But her journey as a Black woman and what she's had to overcome is what allows those athletes, many of which struggle with dental anxiety stemming from lack of proper care during childhood, to trust Ogunleye as someone who understands their condition first hand. Her interaction with athletes extends beyond her profession, as she is married to former NFL Pro Bowler and current UBS finance executive Adewale Ogunleye.

"They definitely can relate to me more because a lot of my high-profile clients share a very similar story," Ogunleye said. "Dwyane Wade, who is also a friend and not just a client, I remember him just seeing me one day and just being like 'man, I'm really proud of you and everything you're doing,' and I felt what he was saying because it's not easy. They know how much work it takes to really work and refine your craft."