When the Dentist Is the Thing People Are Afraid Of

What one general practitioner in San José learned about fear, and why it changed how he works

Denise Stromgren spent thirty years running the health office at a junior high school in Turlock. Most of what came through her door was the ordinary catalog of adolescent complaints: sprained ankles, headaches, and the occasional nosebleed. But the cases that stayed with her were something else. Kids who sat in the back of class, could not focus, or snapped at teachers. Kids who were quietly in pain, and had been for a long time, because nobody had taken them to a dentist. She brought those stories home. Her son Jack heard them at the dinner table from the time he was six years old.

Jack Stromgren would say now, in the practiced way of someone who has answered the question many times, that this is how he became a dentist. It is mostly true. The less flattering version, which he will give if the conversation goes on long enough, is that he was a decent biology student at UC Davis who liked working with his hands and realized early that dentistry was the rare job where he could fix something in an afternoon and the person could leave in better condition than when they arrived.

Both things can be true at once. They usually are.

A Residency That Changed What He Was Paying Attention To

Jack Stromgren graduated from the UCSF School of Dentistry in 2005 and went directly into a general practice residency at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. The caseload there was not routine. He worked with trauma patients, handled emergency extractions, and treated people who arrived at the county hospital because they had nowhere else to go and something in their mouth had finally become impossible to ignore.

He describes that year as the one when he actually learned dentistry. His formal education had given him technique. The residency gave him patients who were frightened, in pain, and not always able to explain which feeling was affecting them most.

During those twelve months, he noticed a pattern. The patients who struggled most in the chair were not always the ones with the most serious conditions. They were often the ones who felt ambushed. Something happened that they had not been told to expect, and their ability to continue collapsed in that moment.

Patients who had been guided through the procedure in advance often managed better. Knowing what a sound would be, what a sensation might feel like, and approximately how long a step would take could reduce the element of surprise, even during a difficult procedure.

This was not a revolutionary insight. Plenty of dentists understand it in theory. What Stromgren did was turn it into a consistent habit.

The Practice on Lincoln Avenue

After eight years as an associate at a high-volume practice in Sunnyvale, Stromgren bought a retiring dentist’s practice in Willow Glen in 2014. It had four operatories, a hygienist who had been there for nineteen years, a patient roster of approximately 1,100, and carpet that, by his own account, should have been removed years earlier. He renamed it Stromgren Family Dentistry, renovated the office in 2019, and continued developing the Lincoln Avenue practice.

It now serves more than 3,000 patients. Stromgren added a fifth operatory, a second hygienist, and an associate who joined the practice in 2022. The clinical work includes general restorative dentistry, implants, and oral appliance therapy for sleep apnea. That last service area began after the needs of one patient led him to examine the subject more closely. The practice has expanded considerably since 2014.

Over time, Jack Stromgren began treating a substantial number of adults with dental anxiety. That area of the practice developed through patient referrals rather than a formal advertising campaign.

During appointments with anxious patients, he slows the pace and explains each step before proceeding. It is the same habit he began developing during his residency, when he recognized that an unexpected sound, sensation, or movement could make an already difficult appointment harder to complete.

What Dental Fear Actually Does to Adults

Dental anxiety in adults often looks different from the way it appears in children. Children may resist openly. Adults may disappear. They schedule an appointment and cancel it. They reschedule twice and then stop answering reminder calls. Some manage an infection with over-the-counter pain medication for months because the anticipation of the appointment has become more immediate to them than the infection itself.

By the time a severely anxious adult enters a dental office, the underlying problem may have been developing for years. A cavity that once required a filling may now require a crown. Gum disease that might have been addressed earlier may have progressed into a more serious condition. Delaying treatment can allow both the clinical problem and the cost of addressing it to increase.

None of this is necessarily about ignorance. Most people experiencing severe dental anxiety in Santa Clara County and elsewhere understand that their teeth need attention. Knowledge is not always the barrier. The barrier may be the experience itself, the memory of a previous appointment, or the anticipation of what might happen. Practices that recognize this distinction address the anxiety as part of the care process.

November Saturdays

Every year since 2016, with the exception of 2020, Jack Stromgren has held a free dental day on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. A banner goes up on the sidewalk. The office staff works in matching navy polos, and approximately sixty to seventy people come through the door. Stromgren covers the cost, estimated at around $9,000, and does not claim a great deal of strategic clarity about why he began the event or why he continues it.

He also participated for several years in a school sealant program serving two elementary schools on the east side of San José. The program ended after its grant structure changed. He serves on the board of a local free clinic and coached his son’s recreational soccer team for four seasons.

Together, those activities reflect a consistent interest in reaching people who might otherwise go without dental care. They also connect back to the stories Stromgren heard at the dinner table as a child about students whose behavior concealed untreated pain.

The Gap Between Knowing and Going

Dentistry has a particular problem. The field can address conditions that affect pain, health, and daily function, yet many people delay or avoid receiving care. The reasons vary, but fear can be especially difficult because it often becomes stronger as a dental problem grows more complicated. A person who avoids care at thirty may face a much harder problem at fifty.

What Stromgren has developed in Willow Glen is not a solution at scale. It is one practice, shaped by one practitioner’s habits, with appointments currently booking approximately eleven weeks in advance. Still, it demonstrates that the distance between what dentistry can provide and what a frightened patient feels able to accept is not necessarily fixed. Under the right conditions, that distance can close one appointment at a time.

His mother would recognize the logic.