The healthcare company helps promote wellness, prevention, and health education for athletes with intellectual disabilities, including a Special Smiles® program
By Stan Goff, Senior Content Editor
At last month’s Special Olympics World Winter Games Turin 2025, 1,500 athletes representing over 100 countries gathered for the sporting experience of a lifetime, while Henry Schein, Inc. continued to do its part to play a key role in helping improve the oral health and overall health of the participants.
Henry Schein supported the Special Olympics Healthy Athletes® screenings at the Special Olympics World Winter Games, which took place from March 8 to 15, 2025, in Turin, Italy. The organization, which has partnered with the Special Olympics since 2018, donated a range of oral health and medical products essential to overall health and wellness. During the Healthy Athletes Ribbon Cutting Ceremony, on March 8, the company was recognized for these contributions. Healthy Athletes offers free health screenings and education to participating Special Olympics athletes. The goal of the program is to identify and address unmet health needs for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) and provide referrals for follow-up care while also promoting healthy lifestyle choices.
The program included Special Smiles® (dentistry), which provides athletes with comprehensive oral health care information, free dental screenings, instructions on proper brushing and flossing techniques, and, if needed, a referral to a dental care provider at home trained to treat people with IDD, states Henry Schein.
Previously Henry Schein has donated essential health care products to support local programs in Canada, Germany, Israel, Jamaica, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Most recently, in support of the Special Olympics World Games in Berlin in June of 2023, the healthcare and dental organization provided $55,000 in medical and non-medical supplies to support the administration of the Games.
“Over the past seven years, our partnership with Henry Schein has been pivotal in enabling us to deliver free high-quality health screenings for our athletes,” shared Dimitri Christakis, MD, MPH, Chief Health Officer at Special Olympics, in a press release. “We are grateful for the organization’s ongoing support in Turin, which enables us to provide accessible and dignified healthcare that everyone deserves.”
The most recent donations were used during the Special Olympic World Winter Games for screenings in seven Healthy Athletes disciplines. In addition to the Special Smiles® discipline, Henry Schein’s donations also supported Fit Feet (podiatry), FUNFitness (physiotherapy), Health Promotion (preventive medicine), Healthy Hearing (audiology), Special Olympics Lions Clubs International Foundation Opening Eyes® (vision care), and Strong Minds (mental health).
“At Henry Schein, we are strongly committed to ‘help health happen’ and to create shared value for society,” added Jennifer Kim Field, Chief Sustainability Officer at Henry Schein. “We are honored to support Healthy Athletes – alongside Special Olympics and health care providers – to provide convenient access to quality health care and to ensure a healthier future for Special Olympics athletes who are often at higher risk for experiencing health disparities.”
Since its inception in 1997, Healthy Athletes has delivered over two million free health screenings and trained over 300,000 health care professionals, clinical volunteers, and students in using adapted screening protocols and in communicating effectively with people with IDD. These training sessions also aid in building the health care community’s capacity to serve the needs of people with IDD outside of Special Olympics events, as providers take these skills back to their practices and provide higher-quality health care to people with IDD – not just Special Olympic athletes – in their communities.
The donations to Special Olympics Healthy Athletes are an initiative of Henry Schein Cares, the company’s global corporate citizenship program. Henry Schein Cares aims to drive change through five pillars: catalyzing health care access; advancing policies, solutions, and innovation; relationship building for change; empowering Team Schein; and sustaining the planet.
