TopVet: Dr. Marco Gargano

Dr. Marco Gargano is an Army National Guardsman and dentist in Kansas City, Missouri who serves the veteran community with affordable dental care.

“It was instilled in me early on that the American dream is achievable and very doable if you’re willing to put in the work,” Dr. Gargano said in an exclusive interview with WeSalute. He was born in New York but raised in Hot Springs, Arkansas. His parents immigrated from Palermo, Italy, leaving poverty for better opportunity. “I thought joining the military was a way to give back and to serve my country in that capacity.”

His parents were in the restaurant business and often gave military discounts to their dining customers. He attended college at the University of Arkansas and during his senior year, his roommate from ROTC was going into the National Guard.

“I thought it would be cool if I could do that but I had to go to dental school. It turns out, I could do both,” he said. Dr. Gargano joined the National Guard in 2018 and served as private first class for a year before being commissioned as an officer. He works for a medical unit at Camp Robinson, Arkansas, making the six hour drive one weekend a month from where he lives now in Missouri. His parents live an hour from the base so he makes a point to see them during his visits.

He describes his first year in the National Guard as a “culture shock.” He remained in the recruit sustainment program for a year because he was applying to dental school. After he was accepted to dental school at Louisiana State University in New Orleans, he commissioned as an officer and went on to work in the clinic in Arkansas.

“What’s really neat about Arkansas is that all of the medical providers are under one roof, so people bounce from station to station and that allows for collaboration between all of the providers,” he said. “I think it’s what has led Arkansas to be the top medcom unit in the country, leading the way in medical readiness for deployment.” They are one of four states now that provide dental care onsite instead of purely doing the exams and outsourcing the treatments.

Dr. Gargano thought he wanted to be a cardiologist, though the subject became his lowest grade. His parents had a friend who was an oral surgeon who he shadowed as a teenager and he actually passed out while watching his first oral surgery. “That shows you how far we’ve come there!” he laughed. He said his four years in LSU’s dental program were the time of his life, emphasizing the strong, surgically heavy program. 

He began working at Aspen Dental in April 2023 in Columbia, MO, where there is a nearby military base. He was treating the military community both from the civilian side and in the service. He noticed that many veterans needed more dental care than the average population and was finding people coming in needing treatment but struggling to pay for it, to be cleared for duty. 

“Sometimes you have to just do it for free. You don’t have to, but ethically, it just feels right. When I moved to managing the practice in Lee Summit in May 2024, I made it a priority that any veteran or soldier that comes through - we have a business to run and we want to be fair to all of our patients, but if someone is down on their luck, I don’t think you go broke by helping people.” He purchased the dental practice in September 2024.

Dr Gargano enjoys connecting with his patients so he turned to general dentistry. He often identifies veterans by their hats or their comments about their service and makes it a point to connect with them on the human level, sometimes even going so far as to book extra time for the appointment to make space for conversation. He estimates that at least once a week he sees a veteran come in.

Aspen Dental has the Healthy Mouth Movement program nationwide. The program has shifted over the last decade but now invites veterans into their 1,100+ offices in 46 different states. Dr. Gargano’s favorite patient in the last 6 months was an Army veteran named Clifford. He ended up doing a $30,000 surgery on him for free.

“Aspen Dental never made me choose between serving my patients back home and serving my country.”

Dr. Gargano recently got into Ironman competitions and will compete in his second one in Panama City next month. “I don’t know if I’m a glutton for punishment or what,” he joked. He also enjoys traveling, hiking, and visiting family.