In the year 2008, the California Dental Association Foundation established the Humanitarian Award to honor Andrew Soderstrom, a pediatric dentist in Modesto, California to recognize his services for children in need regardless of their economic situation particularly those with special medical needs and developmental issues.
Dr. Soderstrom fought hard to bring the fluoridation to the water system in his hometown of Modesto and bought as well, the California Cares, a dental outreach mission that provided free dental services to people in need. He served as President of the CDA in 2011.
The CDA Foundation’s choice for the 2025 Humanitarian Award is Dr. Edgardo A. de la Vega, the President and Founder of Dentistry For Every Village Foundation, a small public corporation based at Woodland Hills, California. A long-time humanitarian, Dr. Ed as his friends and patients call him, is being honored for the changes he created and the improvement he made to access to dental care for the poorest of the poor in the Philippines.
He accomplished this by raising funds and many times using his own personal resources to finance outreach dental missions 4 times a year in different parts of the country. More importantly, he builds and donates full service dental offices to health care entities and local government units that can manage them and provide free dental services to the people in their area of responsibility,
Dr. Ed has been doing missions for almost three decades and has built 6 free dental clinics across the Philippines- at Tacloban, Leyte; Pambuhan, Northern Samar; Paranaque Cit, Metro Manila; Villareal, Western Samar; Arayat, Pampanga; and Bulan, Sorsogon. Three more are presently under construction at Magallanes, Sorsogon; Iriga, Camarines Sur, and San Miguel, Bulacan.
Over the years, Dr. Ed has accumulated numerous portable dental equipment and hand instruments that can service as much as 500 patients a day during dental missions. The services provided are usually done by the Foundation’s partner dentists based in the Philippines- members of the Las Piñas Chapter of the Philippines Dental Association and the Group A Dental Associates.
Unlike many groups doing missions in the Philippines that are mostly doing extractions due to limited equipment, the availability of numerous dental equipment and instruments including a portable computer assisted digital x-ray system allow the volunteers to do many phases of dentistry including restoration of decayed teeth, periodontal procedures using ultrasonic scalers and hand held curettes, simple root canals, and provisional anterior fiber supported bridges. Patient education, nutritional counselling and oral hygiene tools for patients are provided during the missions.
Dr. Ed graduated from the College of Dentistry, University of the Philippines and has completed post graduate general residency training at McGill University at Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
In 1969, due to existing dental laws in the State of California that did not recognize dental degrees from out the US and Canadian dental schools, Dr. Ed applied for and was accepted as an Advanced Placement dental student at the University of Southern California School of Dentistry . It is there where he earned his Doctor of Dental Surgery Degree and thus was allowed to practice in the State after passing the Licensure Examinations.
Dr. Ed was a former President of the Los Angeles Dental Society (Year 2000),the National Association of Filipino Dentists in American (1984) and the Southern California Dental Society (1969). He is a Fellow of the American College of Dentists, the International College of Dentists, the Academy of General Dentistry and the Academy of Dentistry International.
In 1982, he was appointed by the then State Governor Jerry Brown Jr., as Member of the State of California Board of Dental Examiners. He served the Board for 4 long years.
In the year 2016, he was awarded the Humanitarian of the Year by the Academy of Dentistry International, a world-wide dental service organization.
Dr. Ed is married to the Marcela Landeta, BSN,RN,MN- a well-accomplished nurse that served at various San Fernando Valley area hospitals at Los Angeles as Nursing Director. They have 4 children, Karla, Enrico, Melissa and Amanda. They are now both enjoying retirement and devoting their golden years sharing their blessings through the Dentistry For Every Village Foundation.
The Dentistry for Every Village Foundation, Inc., raises funds by seeking grants and donations to build dental clinics. These clinics are donated to health care institutions that have the resources to house the facility, experiences and expertise to run them efficiently, and whose management is supportive of the cause.
