High Desert Oral and Facial Surgery Gift and Match Expand Oral Surgery Training in an Underserved Region

$250,000 gift, matched to $500,000 by Texas Tech Health El Paso, creates an endowed professorship to support residency leadership

EL PASO, TX / ACCESS Newswire / February 27, 2026 / When oral and maxillofacial surgeon Vernon Burke thinks about access to specialized dental medicine, he thinks about the patient who should not have to leave home for care. Even in El Paso, the sixth biggest city in Texas, he sees too many patients with facial trauma, complex jaw disorders or reconstructive needs referred far from where they live because there aren’t enough specialists trained and practicing in this high-need region.

A major $250,000 gift from High Desert Oral and Facial Surgery, an El Paso-based practice, will address a longstanding shortage of oral and maxillofacial surgeons in the region. The endowment supports a four-year OMFS residency program at the Hunt School of Dental Medicine that trains three residents per cohort, with leaders expecting it to reduce out-of-region referrals and ease delays for care.

West Texas is a federally designated dental health professional shortage area. In El Paso County, there is roughly only one dentist per 2,969 residents, compared with a U.S. average of about one per 1,660, a gap that can delay care and worsen outcomes. Increasing community-backed dental residencies is a pipeline solution for underserved regions.

Texas Tech Health El Paso will match the gift, creating a $500,000 endowed professorship to support the residency director and help sustain the four-year training pathway for oral surgeons.

“We would not have this residency program without the support of High Desert Oral and Facial Surgery,” said Richard Black, D.D.S., M.S., dean of the Hunt School of Dental Medicine. “They believed in the vision for this school.”

Burke, D.M.D., M.D., FACS, founding director of the OMFS residency program at the dental school, said he saw the heart-breaking impact of limited surgical capacity in El Paso, especially for pediatric patients.

“When I came to El Paso, I came here with a mission to stop that,” Burke said. “That mission will not be complete until there are enough oral and maxillofacial surgeons here to do what is required at a high enough level so El Pasoans no longer need to leave to receive world-class care.”

The program trains residents at three locations: the Texas Tech Dental Oral Health Clinic, University Medical Center of El Paso and El Paso Children’s Hospital, and High Desert Oral and Facial Surgery’s westside clinic. Residents rotate through emergency trauma, complex reconstructive surgery and pediatric care settings in a bilingual, bicultural environment.

The program’s first residents began last July. Burke said the second cohort, which begins in July, drew 150 applicants for three positions in a specialty that graduates about 230 to 250 residents nationwide each year. In the first six months, the inaugural residents completed roughly twice the procedures and cases required by the Commission on Dental Accreditation for that period.

About Texas Tech Health El Paso
Texas Tech Health El Paso, established in 2013, serves 108 counties in West Texas and offers programs in medicine, nursing, biomedical sciences, and dentistry. Its 2,600 graduates focus on excellence in education, research, and clinical service.

Media Contact: Marty Otero at 915-215-6017 marty.otero@ttuhsc.edu

SOURCE: Texas Tech Health El Paso

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