Small Town, Big Impact: 2024-2025 WSDA President Dr. Chris Dorow

According to Chris Dorow, there’s something special about being a small-town dentist.

Dorow, who will serve as WSDA’s next president, should know. His is the only private practice in the rural town of Othello (population 9,000) in eastern Washington.

“I’m simply the dentist,” he said. “When I go into Walmart, more often than not, I’ll end up getting asked to do an impromptu exam for someone. I like that, knowing the people and having them know me. It’s like I’m surrounded by friends.”

That bond is never turned off, even when he is hundreds of miles from home. Before our interview can begin, he has to squeeze in a few phone calls dealing with one patient’s dental emergency. He knows that patient’s dental and medical history and provides a recommendation on how to manage the issue until he is back in his office the next morning. He manages the details remotely, knowing just the right thing to say to calm a concerned parent and to reassure his staff. “You’re rock stars,” he tells them.

Dorow’s affection for both dentistry and the town of Othello is completely understandable: He grew up there and his father was a dentist.

Upon graduating from high school, Dorow enrolled at Central Washington University on a music scholarship; he played trumpet and guitar, but was stronger in vocal performance. He still loves music, especially classic rock and blues.

However, after seeing the unpredictability that comes with a career in music, he decided that a better course would be to follow in the footsteps of his father – a man he considers one of his heroes. He enrolled in the University of Washington School of Dentistry, then joined and eventually acquired his dad’s practice. He’s never practiced anywhere else in his 30 years in the profession.

What’s more, if everything goes according to plan, he won’t be the last Dorow tending to the oral health needs of Othello residents. His 23-year-old son Dakota plans to attend dental school, with the goal of becoming a third-generation dentist in Othello. Dorow’s 21-year-old daughter Demi also plans to attend dental school, but her future career location isn’t as defined as her brother’s.

“Where she ends up will probably depend on who she falls in love with,” Dorow said with a chuckle.

If one or both of the next generation of Dorow dentists do end up in Othello, they’ll be practicing in an environment that’s very different than the one their father entered three decades ago.

Back then, the town was less than half its current size, but there were still more dental options available. “When I was getting started, there were seven dental clinics in a 15-mile radius,” he recalled. “Now I’m the only one. I could list 50 towns across Washington that once had dental practices, but no longer do. It says a lot about the importance of addressing access, especially in rural Washington.”

But a lack of dental clinic options isn’t the only challenge facing dentists and their patients in smaller communities like Othello.

“Access to trained staff is a problem everywhere, but it’s especially difficult in a small town,” Dorow said. “It’s almost impossible to recruit associates or hygienists; it took me three years to find a hygienist to work in my office. With no local dental assistant school, we have to ‘grow our own.’ That means finding bright young people who are looking for opportunities and training them to become assistants.”

Dorow’s ability to navigate those challenges and continue to meet the needs of his patients does not go unnoticed.

“In our community, there are a lot of people who don’t have a lot of money,” said Othello Mayor Shawn Logan. “Chris doesn’t care whether he gets paid or not, he’s going to care for people who need it. He cares about people, about our community.”

“Unfortunately, that’s a trait that’s a bit rare these days. But at a time when we can’t get people to volunteer, he’s just the opposite; he can’t say no. I don’t remember him ever saying no. He has a long-term focus and people see that; they see the integrity. He’s a catalyst.

“I have to limit how many requests I make of him, because I know how busy he is,” Logan added.

“Being a dentist gives me a platform to be a true leader in a community like Othello. Of course, it helps to not realize how hard some things are going to be to get done,” Dorow said with his typical self-deprecation.

His busy schedule hasn’t stopped Dorow from serving as chair of Othello’s Planning Commission, a post that demands a big-picture, long-term focus and is especially important for a community where sustainable, well-managed growth remains a priority. He also serves as Othello’s de facto master of ceremonies, manning the microphone as host of numerous charity and community events.

“He’s very talented at talking,” said Genna Dorow, his wife of 29 years, with a smile. “If he hadn’t become a dentist, he should have been a teacher. He’s great at explaining things so people can understand. Or maybe he should have been a politician.”

Genna knows something about what it takes to be a successful politician, having served on the Othello City Council for 14 years. She recently was voted mayor pro-tem by her council peers. In fact, there may even be a little friendly rivalry in the Dorow house regarding who can take more credit for Othello’s successful growth in recent years, although Chris suspects that the votes in that particular contest have already been cast.

“My wife says that I’m more of a politician than she is. But around town, I’m known as ‘Genna’s husband,’” he said.

She counters: “He’s like having a first child. He still hasn’t grown up!” She recalls their first dates more than three decades ago, when he would take her to a local elementary school so he could dunk on its shorter basketball hoop. “He made me laugh then and he still makes me laugh,” she said.

Dorow’s efforts to impress Genna with his basketball prowess notwithstanding, he was drawn more to another winter sport.

“I loved hockey; I played it while in dental school,” he said. “I still love hockey and I still play it, though I’ve given up the ice skates and just play roller hockey now.”

Dorow declines to say whether incidents at the rink have led to any new dental patients. But in typical fashion he has turned his love for the sport into good news for the Othello community. He started a hockey program for at-risk youth aimed at helping curb gang violence.

Dorow’s ability to say no to requests for help doesn’t improve when he leaves Othello’s city limits. He grew up as an avid hunter and fisherman. Even today, his voice mail message features duck calls and a light-hearted note that he might be out in a field somewhere. Given that interest, he naturally was familiar with the work of Ducks Unlimited, an international non-profit organization that works to conserve, restore and manage wetlands and related habitats for North American waterfowl.

In the mid-1990s, Dorow was recruited to become the chair of the organization’s local chapter, a position whose duties included coordinating a fundraiser. The success of that event led to him being recruited to serve as a zone chair, and then a district chair. He was then approached by the state chair, who asked if he would consider serving in that role. Of course, the answer was yes and he became, at age 29, the youngest Washington state chair in Ducks Unlimited history.

Within a year, he helped double the state organization’s fundraising to over $1 million annually, an impressive performance that naturally caught the attention of the national organization. He was recognized as the top state chair and soon found himself appointed to several national committees dealing with fundraising, identification and engagement of major donors, and identifying and implementing major preservation programs and projects.

That service led to a seat on the Ducks Unlimited board of directors, where he progressed to serve as regional vice president representing five states and then on to senior vice president, where he represented 11 states.

Dorow values the Ducks Unlimited experience for both the difference made by projects he was involved with and the leadership lessons he learned.

“I got to be involved in some unbelievable stuff,” he said. He remembers being recruited by California Senators Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer to serve in a key role in securing passage of an $11.4 billion water bond for the Golden State. He also takes pride in the role played by Ducks Unlimited in protecting North America’s largest forest, the Western Boreal Forest, which stretches from Alaska through the Yukon Territories and across northern Canada.

“I was working to save the planet before it was cool to do that,” Dorow said. “And what I realized was that the success of Ducks Unlimited came from the strength of its volunteer leadership team and how much time and energy they invested in leadership development and succession planning.”

His term on the Ducks Unlimited board took him across the US and Canada for meetings and events. “It was cool, because I was able to see things that I never would have had an opportunity to see otherwise,” he recalled. Still, after four years on the board, he was ready to stick closer to home.

“The night I got home from my last convention as a Ducks Unlimited board member, the phone rang. It was the WSDA president, asking me to run for the board.”

“As a second-generation dentist, my dad really set an example for me. He was very involved in WSDA and also on the board of Washington Dental Service (now Delta Dental of Washington),” Dorow said. “It’s a running family joke; I’m always telling him that we’re still trying to undo the damage he did on that board!”

Following his father’s example, Dorow jumped into organized dentistry early. He took on leadership roles at the University of Washington School of Dentistry, serving as the president of the student council. WSDA was focused on outreach to dental students at the time, and he hit it off with then-executive director Steve Hardymon and Dr. Dick Ferguson, who was then a WSDA officer and would later go on to serve as its president. It came as no surprise that when WSDA added a student position to the House of Delegates in 1994, Dorow was selected as the first person to fill that role. It was his first of numerous terms as an HOD delegate.

Upon becoming a practicing dentist, Dorow continued his volunteer efforts with WSDA. He was a member of the Communications Committee which coordinated a profession-wide image campaign. From there, he moved to Membership Services and served on the board of Washington Dentists’ Insurance Agency (WDIA). When he left his WDIA post, he began volunteering with the Washington Oral Health Foundation (WOHF). That group is now known as the WSDA Foundation, and Dorow is – you guessed it – its president. Additionally, he serves as vice chair of DentPAC, WSDA’s political action committee, helping direct the organization’s advocacy resources to lawmakers who support better oral health and recognize the importance of the doctor-patient relationship.

“There’s almost no committees or task forces at WSDA that I haven’t been involved with in one way or another at one time or another,” Dorow said. For their part, Executive Director Bracken Killpack and Assistant Executive Director Kainoa Trotter also struggled to name a WSDA program to which Dorow has not contributed.

Moving into his term as president, it’s not surprising that Dorow wants WSDA to focus on the personal and emotional needs of individual dentists.

“More and more, we have to be aware of and respond to issues of depression and dissatisfaction within the profession,” he said. “Dentistry has become so much more complicated. We face excessive regulation, the challenge of hiring and keeping good staff, reimbursements that don’t reflect dental inflation. It’s taking away from the true joy of being a dentist, which is caring for our patients.”

“I have too many friends who have gotten burned out and retired. Or they’re talking about just making it to retirement,” Dorow added.

Dorow believes that one step toward restoring dentists’ job satisfaction is through a more common-sense approach in the issues that are impacting dentists.

“We need sensible regulation. Regulation should only be imposed if it’s responding to a real problem, not some hypothetical one. It should focus on eliminating bad outcomes, rather than trying to prevent something that’s never happened.”

The same approach holds for dental benefits. “We need reforms so that reimbursements keep pace with inflation, and we need to eliminate the interference of third parties in the doctor-patient relationship,” he said.

Regardless of the issue, outgoing WSDA President Nathan Russell said that members can expect Dorow’s leadership style to be based on optimism and personal integrity.

“The thing I love about Chris is that he’s a compassionate consensus-builder. He has an innate ability to listen to both sides of an issue. He won’t dig in his heels; he’s willing to be persuaded to take an approach if it’s for the good of the organization, even if it wouldn’t be the path that he would have chosen. He’ll support the group decision and articulate that going forward.”

“Plus, he’s always positive. He’s everyone’s friend. Just a joy to be around.”

Similarly, Dorow takes his inspiration from those he works with throughout the WSDA organization.

“The coolest thing is that I have been able to work with some of the best people at WSDA. They’ve been great leaders and great mentors. I’ve had the chance to see them put together processes to make consequential decisions to make things better for all of us, both in the short term and for decades to come. These people have really changed the trajectory of my career, and I’ll never forget them,” he said.

Building on that legacy, Dorow sees his mission as spreading his love of the dental profession.

“It’s a gift that I get to take care of people. I just want everyone to have my experience and love dentistry as much as I do.”