Two clinics
North and South Calgary
Sage Hill in the northwest and Buffalo Run in the south. All five specialists work at both, and the full range of care is available at each, so you pick whichever one is closer to home.
See both locationsAbout us
Your child is the only kind of patient we see
Five pediatric specialists, two Calgary clinics and our own day surgery centre. Nothing here is divided between children and adults, so everything your child meets was chosen for a child.
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5 specialistsPediatric training, not general practice
4.8 starsFrom 1,500+ Calgary families
Six days a weekA full clinic day on Saturdays, not emergencies only
Who we are
Your child keeps the same dental home
Children’s Dental Health Centre is a pediatric dental practice with two Calgary clinics and its own day surgery centre. All five dentists are pediatric specialists, having completed additional training after dental school in treating children, adolescents and patients with special healthcare needs. You do not need a referral to book.
A dental home means one practice holds your child’s whole oral health over years. Nobody gets passed around to whoever happens to be free that week. It matters because dentistry for children is mostly about change: what a tooth looks like today tells us far less than what it looked like six months ago.
For that to hold, the difficult things have to be possible under the same roof, so your child is not sent elsewhere the moment something gets complicated. The sedation, the anesthesia, the surgical centre and the specialists are all here, which is the whole reason the practice is shaped the way it is.
Two ways in
program or referral
program or referral
How it is put together
Why your child rarely has to go elsewhere
When something is complicated, the question is almost never whether it can be done. It is whether it can be done here, by people your child has already met.
Our own surgical centre
Day surgery, in the same building
If your child needs treatment under general anesthesia and is suitable for an accredited non-hospital facility, that happens two doors down at the South clinic rather than on a hospital waiting list. Every anesthetic is given by a board-certified pediatric anesthesiologist.
About the surgical centreSix days a week
Open Saturdays, at both clinics
A full clinic day, not emergencies only. Saturdays solve the problem of weekday appointments being hard to fit, and for most families that is the difference between twice-yearly visits happening and quietly not.
Book an appointmentWhat we hold to
What you can count on, every visit
Nothing happens before your child knows about it
Every step gets explained in words a child can hold on to, and shown before it is done. Nobody gets held down. A child who knows what is coming copes with far more than a child who is being surprised.
You hear what we would do for our own kids
Sometimes the answer is to do nothing yet. If treatment can reasonably wait, or your child does not need the thing you came in asking about, you’ll be told that.
A difficult case is not a problem here
Children who have been turned away elsewhere, who are autistic, who are medically complex, or who are frightened after something that went badly. This is what the training is for, not an exception to it.
How your child feels about it counts too
A filling done badly for a six year old can produce an adult who avoids dentists for twenty years. That is not a side effect. It is the thing that decides how the rest of their mouth goes.
The people
Who your child meets besides the dentist
The dentist is the part families think about. But most of whether a visit goes well is decided by the other 13: who greets a frightened four year old at the desk, who sits with them while the freezing takes, who notices that a parent has three more questions they haven’t asked.
That team includes coordinators, administrators, a nursing team and the pediatric anesthesiologists who work in our surgical centre.
Our story
How the practice started
Born and raised in Calgary, Dr. Don He began his career in general dentistry before realising that caring for children, including those with medical complexities and special needs, was where he wanted to spend it. He went on to complete specialty training in pediatric dentistry at BC Children’s Hospital and the University of British Columbia.
When he came back to Calgary he wanted to build a dental home around children: somewhere families had time to ask questions, children could build trust at their own pace, and prevention, growth and treatment were considered together rather than one appointment at a time. He founded Children’s Dental Health Centre in 2018 with that in mind.
As more families came, the South clinic opened in 2024. The team later developed Children’s Dental Surgical Centre, to make coordinated dental treatment under general anesthesia easier to reach for the children who need it. Today our teams have cared for thousands of children across Calgary and the communities around it.
Questions
About the practice
What is a pediatric dentist?
A dentist who has completed two to three years of additional specialty training after dental school, focused entirely on treating children, adolescents and patients with special healthcare needs. That training covers child development and behaviour guidance, growth of the jaws and face, sedation and anesthesia for children, and treating children with medical complexity. All five of our dentists are pediatric specialists, and children are the only patients we see.
How many dentists are there, and will we see the same one?
Five, and we will do our best. All of them work across both clinics, and if your child has seen a particular dentist before and you would like to stay with them, say so when you book and we will work around their schedule. Continuity matters more for some children than others, and you know which yours is.
Do you only treat children?
Yes. We do not see adults, which means the waiting room, the appointment lengths, the equipment and the way the team talks are all built around one kind of patient, not split between two.
Up to what age do you see patients?
Through adolescence. Pediatric specialty training covers patients up to around eighteen, and many families stay with us for the whole of that. For teenagers with special healthcare needs or complex medical histories, continuity is often worth extending, and when the time comes to move to an adult practice we help make the transfer properly.
Are you connected to the Alberta Children’s Hospital?
Several of our team are. Dr. Christine Bell has practised at the Alberta Children’s Hospital for over fifteen years, and Dr. Kevin Amaniampong is a staff pediatric dentist at its Pediatric Dental Clinic. The medical director of our surgical centre, Dr. Michael Letal, is a pediatric anesthesiologist there, and our anesthesia team includes the hospital’s Chief of Pediatric Anesthesiology.
Do I need a referral to become a patient?
Not necessarily, and it depends what you are coming for. If you are establishing your child as a new patient and joining our comprehensive prevention program, no referral is needed and you can book directly with us. If your child already has a general or family dentist and you are seeking a specialist consultation for a specific concern, we ask that your dentist provide a referral, so we understand the history and the reason for the visit. Either way, your family dentist receives a consultation letter from us afterwards.