The CHYRON Management Corp.
Our success has hinged on our willingness to do everything.
The CHYRON Management Corporation has made significant contributions in the creation of patient care, teaching and research programs and models, which focus on improving the health and lives of people with intellectual and other disabilities in a variety of clinical and residential settings.
The CHYRON Management program portfolio includes:
- The Underwood and Lee Clinic
- The Hazelwood Dental Services Clinic
- Concepts in Special Patient Care
- Developmental Dentistry Fellowship Program
- The International Developmental Dentistry Externship Program
- The Samuel J. and Louise G. Underwood Research Program
- National Recognition
Clicking on the above-listed hypertext links will take the reader to the following text.
The CHYRON Management client portfolio includes:
The Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services
The Florida Agency for Persons with Disabilities
The Louisiana Office for Citizens with Disabilities
The Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services
The Ohio Department of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities
The California Department of Developmental Services
The Illinois Department of Human Services
The Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services
The Underwood and Lee Clinic, created and managed by CHYRON, is located in Louisville, Kentucky, and serves greater than nine-hundred community-based adult and pediatric dental patients with neurodevelopmental disorders and intellectual disabilities from forty-four counties in the Commonwealth. The clinic program also features a rich predoctoral and postdoctoral teaching component, which includes a one-year, PGY-1 developmental dentistry fellowship, and a research program that has produced scientific papers and book chapters published in the United States, Great Britain, Germany and Japan.
In 2003, the Underwood and Lee Clinic won the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Beneficiary Services Certificate of Merit for pioneering a partnership between a University and an intermediate care facility (ICF) to serve people with intellectual disabilities living in the community. In December of 2003, the program model was featured in the Journal on Dental Education, the official publication of the American Dental Education Association. In 2007, the Underwood and Lee Clinic won the Kentucky & Greater Louisville Associations of Health Underwriters Irving H. Shaw Award for Distinguished Healthcare Services. Other notable recipients of this award include: Surgeon General C. Everett Coop; artificial heart pioneer Dr. Robert Jarvik; and world-renowned Louisville hand surgeons, Drs. Harold Kleinert and Joseph Kutz.
In 2010, the Underwood and Lee program will expand to include the provision of medical, dental and behavioral services. The construction of a new, 18,000 square foot clinic building is part of that expansion project.
The Hazelwood Dental Services Clinic
The Hazelwood Dental Services Clinic program was originally established by CHYRON Chief Clinical Officer, Dr. Henry Hood, to provide quality dental services to the 211 intellectually disabled residents of the Hazelwood Center in Louisville, Kentucky; and to provide a suitable clinical environment for the instruction of dental students in the care of this population.
The new program would soon achieve national recognition, and upon the written request of Sen. Mitch McConnell, 16th Surgeon General David Satcher invited Dr. Hood to participate in his historic Surgeon General's Conference on Health Disparities and Mental Retardation at Georgetown University. Dr. Satcher’s subsequent landmark report, Closing the Gap, published in February of 2002, recognized the Hazelwood dental program, citing it as one program - among approximately twenty programs in the United States - that was working to close the gap for Americans with intellectual disabilities.
Concepts in Special Patient Care
Concepts in Special Patient Care is a twelve-lecture, third-year predoctoral didactic course curriculum, developed by CHYRON for the University of Louisville School of Dentistry. The course is designed to provide the student with a review of basic concepts pertinent to the provision of quality dental care to several patient groups which fall outside the mainstream of more traditional patient care activities - a constellation of populations commonly referred to as patients with special needs.
Concepts discussed in this lecture course address special patient dental care in a variety of clinical settings, and help form the conceptual basis for required, fourth-year clinical rotations in special care dentistry at the Underwood and Lee Clinic.
Developmental Dentistry Fellowship Program
The Underwood and Lee Clinic’s Developmental Dentistry Fellowship is a twelve-month, PGY-1 fellowship program developed by CHYRON for dentists who have graduated from an accredited DMD or DDS program, and who wish to enter an additional year of focused training. Based at the Underwood and Lee Clinic in Louisville, Kentucky, the program is designed to provide a comprehensive postdoctoral fellowship experience in the dental care of patients with neurodevelopmental disorders and intellectual disabilities. In addition to encouraging development as a clinician, teacher, and researcher, this unique program also promotes advocacy as an important part of professional citizenship.
The curriculum includes a mixture of didactic and clinical training, immersion clerkships, scheduled mentoring sessions, and seminars. Rotations include a one-week genetics rotation at the Bernard Weisskopf Center for the Evaluation of Children, the Underwood and Lee Clinic’s primary resource for genetic evaluation and genetic counseling; and a one-week neurology / epileptology rotation at the University Of Louisville School of Medicine’s Comprehensive Epilepsy Center.
The program is now in its seventh year of training developmental dentistry fellows, general dentists with expertise in the care of this often medically- complex patient population.
The International Developmental Dentistry Externship Program
The same disparities in access to quality health care that exist for Americans with intellectual disabilities exist worldwide, as well. As is the case in the United States, disparities in health care access for this population around the world are directly linked to disparities in professional education focused on their needs.
In response to this international need, the Underwood and Lee Clinic and the University of Louisville School of Dentistry have established the International Developmental Dentistry Externship Program. The international externship is a two-week training program, developed by CHYRON for foreign dental students and foreign dental graduates who have an interest in the care of this patient population, but who are unable to obtain training in this field elsewhere around the world.
In 2007, the Underwood and Lee Clinic proudly welcomed its first International Developmental Dentistry Extern, Student Dr. Heather Cowdry, from the King’s College of London’s Dental Institute, London, England.
The Samuel J. and Louise G. Underwood Research Program
The Samuel J. and Louise G. Underwood Foundation funds an ongoing, patient-centered, multi-phasic research program, focused exclusively on identifying deficiencies in the health care being provided to people with intellectual disabilities, and devising solutions to those problems. The program, developed and administered by CHYRON, won seven research awards in its first five years, and has produced scientific articles published in the United States, Germany, Great Britain and Japan.
Research efforts have addressed major clinical issues affecting the quality of health and life of patients with intellectual disabilities. Areas of study have included the development of safe radiographic imaging techniques, the elimination of Phenytoin (Dilantin) as a common anti-seizure medication, and the identification of undiagnosed neurodevelopmental disorders in dental patients with intellectual disabilities.
Current research manuscripts address topics, which include enamel erosion as a clinical finding, and its relationship to undiagnosed gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) in patients with intellectual disabilities; and neuromuscular electrical stimulation as a treatment for salivary incontinence, dysphagia and other movement disorder-related maladies.
“It is because . . . of their ability to produce some of the best health outcomes that I have ever seen for people with intellectual disabilities that I support their efforts to expand the services of the Underwood and Lee Clinic.”
Timothy P. Shriver, PhD
Chairman of the Board, Special Olympics International
“The Underwood and Lee Clinic has singularly been successful in achieving milestones that have eluded the rest of the models in healthcare for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.”
Richard A. Rader, MD, FAAIDD
Immediate Past President, American Academy of Developmental Medicine and Dentistry
Former Special Liaison for Family Healthcare Concerns, President's Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities
“As the Commonwealth of Kentucky now approaches the expansion of the Underwood and Lee Clinic mission to also include both family medicine and psychiatry, I can wholeheartedly recommend Drs. Hood and Holder as exactly the kind of leaders suited for this mission.”
John N. Williams, DMD, MBA
Dean, School of Dentistry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
“Dr. Holder and Dr. Hood . . . have dedicated their lives to helping others and, in my humble opinion, there is no greater calling.” “. . . With this new, expanded clinic, they can make even more contributions to this growing field.”
Joseph M. Valenzano, MBA
President & CEO, Exceptional Parent Magazine
“Our family will always hold the clinic close to our hearts for the door you opened for my daughter, and the difference you made in her and her smile.”
Melissa Floyd
Mother of an Underwood and Lee Clinic Patient