Dental Public Health Workforce

February 26-27, 2004

In 2000 ASTDD convened a Leadership Committee through a cooperative agreement from the HRSA Maternal and Child Health Bureau and issued an ASTDD Dental Public Health Leadership Initiative in 2002. The first goal, “Develop a sustainable plan for assuring an adequate cadre of dental public health leaders,” included action steps to convene a meeting of partners to plan collaborative strategies and outline roles, and to identify funding options for the various projects. ASTDD wrote a proposal to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in response to a conference grant RFP to convene a national workshop to address dental public health workforce issues in a coordinated, multi-disciplinary, collaborative fashion. ASTDD subsequently received CDC funding for the workshop, matched by funding from HRSA MCHB through the existing cooperative agreement. The full report of the results of that workshop is available, click HERE

February 9-11, 2009

The current oral health workforce fails to meet the needs of many segments of the U.S. population. This variability in access to oral health services is often related to geography, insurance status, sociodemographic characteristics, and income levels. Challenges include a lack of coordination and integration among the oral health, public health, and medical health care systems; misaligned payment and education systems that focus on the treatment of disease rather than prevention; the lack of a robust evidence base for many dental procedures and workforce models; and regulatory barriers that prevent the exploration of alternative models of care. The Institute of Medicine hosted a workshop on February 9-11, 2009, jointly sponsored by the California HealthCare Foundation and the Health Resources and Services Administration to discuss:

The report of the workshop is on the IOM site.

Denise Krause, Dennis A Frate and Warren L May; J AM Dent Assoc; 2005; 136; 668-677