Dental partners Jared Stewart and Donn Mettens are both from Northern Kentucky and own a practice together.
But that’s not all they have in common.
In addition to their practice, both dentists have dedicated their time to mission trips aimed at providing needed services to countries lacking access to dental healthcare.
Before they partnered to form Mettens and Stewart Dental, located at 1807 Alexandria Pike in Highland Heights, Mettens was already a practicing dentist at the same office. In 2006, he invited Stewart, a Highlands High School junior, to come and shadow him.
“When I was in college, I shadowed in an office like Jared did here, and it was the first time I had ever been in a modern dental office,” Mettens said. “I grew up in the 1950s-60s dentist offices with no Novocain or anything. Totally, totally different. I got lucky and shadowed in an office with a dentist and decided that I really, really liked it.”
Stewart said Metten’s office stood out to him because of the way he ran things and the respect he held from the community.
“This building was the first office I ever shadowed a dental procedure,” Stewart said. “It was a pretty big surgery, which is something I always remember because I didn’t expect that in a dental office. So, he was the first person that introduced the surgical side of dentistry to me and probably helped push me toward the kind of practice I have now.”
Fast-forward to 2020, Stewart and Mettens began running the practice together, and as of Jan. 1, Stewart bought the practice.
Before working with Mettens and after graduating from dental school at the University of Louisville, Stewart accepted a Health Professionals Scholarship for dentistry in the Army. Stewart spent six years as a dentist in the Army, working with soldiers and their families between 2015 and 2021.
His first year was spent learning more about specialty areas of dentistry at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs. He then spent two years in Seoul, South Korea, and three years in Ansbach, Germany.
While Stewart was in school, Mettens was involved with a mission group called Sharing America’s Resources Abroad, also known as SARA. Between 2000 and 2013, he went on six to seven trips to the Ukraine.
“Words cannot express the dedication that Dr. Donn Mettens and his whole family have shown to SARA,” said Sara Szilagyi, wife of the late SARA founder, Rev. Stephen Szilagyi. “Because of countless hours at the Good Samaritan Children’s Home in Nagydobrony, Transcarpathia, Ukraine, more than 400 children (also staff and community residents) are eating better, smiling more, and able to live full, pain-free lives.”
According to Szilagyi, Mettens and another director, Alan Mikesell, financed and equipped the original dental clinic at the home (orphanage) in Ukraine. The clinic is named “The M&M Clinic,” and a large sign with multi-colored M&Ms surrounds their names.
Szilagyi said Mettens had hosted many doctors and other healthcare professionals at his home, including herself and her late husband. Medical workers from the Ukraine would come to the U.S., where Mettens would teach and learn from them.
“He’d have dentists from Ukraine come here and learn from time to time, and he was able to train them,” Stewart said. “They’re teaching him he’s understanding more how Ukrainians do dentistry, what they do, and so he’s picking up things that they do and making his practice better through it, which stood out to me.”
In addition to his work in Ukraine, Mettens went to the Navajo reservation last summer and is going back this year. He said he is trying to establish volunteer dental services there.
Stewart said Metten’s mission work was another reason he wanted to come to work with him.
“I don’t even know if he’s ever connected or thought of it, but I knew of him doing it throughout his time and as I was picturing what I would do in the future, which was another big reason I wanted to come to work with him because he’d shown how you can own a dental practice but you can also take the time off to go do mission work-type stuff,” he said.
That is precisely what Stewart is doing now.
He has traveled to Uganda, Peru, Jamacia, Guatemala, Honduras and Mumbai. Some of his trips were during dental school, but the most recent ones were through an organization called mPower, where he recently started on the board of directors.
Stewart said that through mPower, they train local medical workers to do simple fillings, remove teeth and clean them.
“I think it’s a good way of doing it as far as you’re more partnering with the local people, giving them the skills you learn to help them continue to do work on their own and establish businesses that kind of thing,” he said. “Your final day there, you’re leaving 100 people waiting outside for you to help, and you got to go home. So, it’s a way to create more of a permanent partnership there.”
Stewart said he is planning to do more mission trips through mPower, and Mettens said he will probably end up tagging along.
“Dr. Stewart’s positive attitude, heart for the nations, and sense of humor make him a joy to be with every time he joins mPower Approach on a mission trip,” said mPower Executive Director Linda Webster. “We are delighted to have him join our board of directors.”
Mettens has been in practice for roughly 27-28 years and said Stewart has come in and done a lot of upgrades, including cosmetic and procedural—making things more high-tech.
“As I was looking into a practice to buy into or to eventually purchase, you ask around to different people, and nobody had a bad thing to say about him (Mettens,)” Stewart said. “You can act a certain way at your business or your practice or your line of work because you want to put on a certain persona, but people that knew him behind the scenes always just said we couldn’t find a better guy to work with.”
