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Beyond the Clinic: How Local Start Dental Is Training Dentists Across the Country

  • Writer: Local Start Dental
    Local Start Dental
  • 5 days ago
  • 5 min read
Three dentists in blue surgical gowns and loupes performing a procedure during a SIDE continuing education course in Durham, NC

Most dental nonprofits do one thing: they provide care to people who can't afford it.

Local Start Dental does that. But Local Start Dental also does something else, something most of our donors have never heard of, something quietly distinctive in the world of nonprofit dental care.


We train dentists.


Through the Southeast Institute for Dental Education (SIDE) — a division of Local Start Dental founded in 2022 — practicing dentists from across the country come to Durham for hands-on continuing education in complex restorative and surgical procedures. In 2025 alone, we completed six SIDE courses. Across the program's history, dentists from across the country have placed implants, learned advanced extraction techniques, and trained in full-arch restoration in our clinic, under the mentorship of board-certified specialists.


The patients who receive care during these courses get treatment they could not otherwise access — complex procedures performed under expert supervision, made possible by the training environment itself. The dentists who attend pay tuition that helps sustain Local Start's broader mission.


The Origin

Local Start Dental opened its doors in 2021 as a clinic in downtown Durham, providing complex restorative dentistry — implants, dentures, extractions — to patients who would otherwise go without. Dr. Mahmoud Serag, Local Start's Clinical Director, joined the team that same year.


In 2022, the Southeast Institute for Dental Education was established as a division of Local Start. The first continuing education courses were completed that same year.


The Model: Service and Training


Dentist in surgical loupes performing a procedure on a patient during hands-on training at the Southeast Institute for Dental Education

SIDE operates on what we call a service-and-training model.


Practicing dentists from across the country enroll in SIDE courses to develop advanced surgical and restorative skills. The courses are taught by Dr. Serag — a board-certified prosthodontist — alongside UNC faculty and leading industry groups. They take place in our 5,000-square-foot clinic and education facility in Durham, equipped with ten fully outfitted operatories, two Carestream cone beam CT scanners, 3D printers, an Ivoclar PM7 mill, and a full dental and design laboratory.


But the defining feature of SIDE is not the equipment. It is the fact that the courses treat real patients.


Local Start patients who require the procedures being taught — implants, extractions, overdentures, full-arch restorations — receive their care during SIDE courses, under the direct supervision of expert instructors. The attending dentists place the implants, perform the extractions, fit the prosthetics, all under direct supervision by expert instructors in a small-group format.


The dentist learns. The patient receives life-changing care. The nonprofit's mission advances. One model. Three outcomes.


The Courses


Three dentists in surgical gowns collaborating on a procedure in a SIDE training operatory equipped with state-of-the-art dental technology

SIDE currently offers six distinct course tracks, each designed for a different level of experience and clinical focus:



All courses are AGD PACE approved for continuing education credit and led by expert specialists in our Durham training facility.


What Dentists Say

The dentists who attend SIDE courses come from across the country — from major metropolitan practices, from small-town family dental offices, from dental service organizations. They arrive at varying levels of experience and leave with skills they immediately bring back to their own patients.


In their own words:

"This experience will benefit my practice. I can't wait to go home and expand my offering to patients. This course has built my confidence and will give my patients more confidence in me. The clinic is one of the best that I've worked in. I know patients here are well served, and I have had a great experience, too."— Dr. Dawson, DECA Dental


Hear directly from other dentists who have completed SIDE courses about what the experience taught them and how it has changed their practice.


These are not anomalies. They are the standard outcome of the SIDE model.


Why This Matters Beyond Durham


Three dental professionals working together on a patient at Local Start Dental's training clinic in Durham, North Carolina

There is a quieter dimension to SIDE that we think more donors should understand.


Every dentist trained through SIDE returns to their own community — sometimes in North Carolina, often elsewhere — and begins offering procedures they could not previously provide. A general dentist who completes the Beginner Single Implant course goes home and begins placing implants for their existing patients, many of whom would have had to travel to specialists, paid more, or simply gone without.


A dentist who completes the Extraction and Socket Preservation course goes home and provides better tooth-removal outcomes for every patient they treat for the rest of their career.


The impact of a single course is not just the course itself. It is the hundreds of patients that dentist will treat over the next decade, in a community Local Start Dental will never directly serve.


This is what we mean when we describe SIDE as a force-multiplier on Local Start's broader mission. We are not just treating the patients in our clinic. We are reshaping, course by course, what kind of care is available across the country.


The Connection to Local Start's Mission


Dr. Mahmoud Serag, prosthodontist and Clinical Director, mentoring two dentists during a live patient procedure at Local Start Dental

It is worth saying clearly: SIDE exists to serve Local Start Dental's mission, not in tension with it.


SIDE is structured as part of Local Start's broader sustainability model — what the organization describes as a 'service-and-training' approach that lessens its dependence on philanthropic assistance alone. The patients treated during SIDE courses receive complex care they could not otherwise afford. The dentists trained through SIDE bring better skills back to their own communities. And the reputation Local Start builds as a national-caliber training institution makes the organization more sustainable, more recognized, and ultimately better able to serve more patients.


There is no version of SIDE that competes with Local Start's nonprofit mission. The two are the same mission, expressed in two directions.


Looking Ahead

In four years, SIDE has grown from an idea to an AGD PACE-approved continuing education program drawing dentists from across the country to Durham. The 2026 course calendar includes courses in beginner and advanced implant placement, overdenture and fixed-hybrid restoration, and extraction and socket preservation.


For the donors and partners who support Local Start Dental, SIDE is part of what your support makes possible. Every gift to Local Start sustains both sides of the work — the patients receiving care in our clinic and the dentists training in our courses.


How You Can Support Us

Every dollar donated to Local Start Dental becomes care, delivered directly to a person in a chair.



There are also other ways to support our work:




Whether your support comes as a donation, a referral, your time, or your skills, it advances both sides of the work — the patients we serve and the dentists we train. Thank you for being part of it.


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