#Dental office toolkit minnesota drivers#
#Dental office toolkit minnesota software#
#Dental office toolkit minnesota license#

1 Addressing oral health disparities requires a fundamental redistribution of knowledge and resources to the communities who bear the greatest burden of disease. 1 These patterns of oral disease burden play out along every social dimension-by income, employment, race, age, geography, and disability status and their many intersections. Oral health disparities in the United States (US) are a defining feature of larger social inequalities and a key marker of disadvantage among the American population. Having firmly taken root politically, the impact of the dental therapy movement in the US, and the long-term health impacts, will depend on the path of implementation and a sustained commitment to the health equity principle. Safe, high-quality care, improvements in access, and patient acceptability have been well documented for DTs in practice. National accreditation standards for education programs that can be deployed in 3 years without an advanced degree reduces educational barriers for improving workforce diversity. Community engagement has been evident in diverse statewide coalitions. Health equity is a driving force for dental therapy adoption. Themes were assessed within a holistic model of oral health equity.

#Dental office toolkit minnesota software#

Dedoose software was used for qualitative coding. Key stakeholder interviews were conducted across the spectrum of engagement in the movement. The study compiled a comprehensive document library on the dental therapy movement including literature, grant documents, media and press, and gray literature.

#Dental office toolkit minnesota drivers#

The objective of this study is to qualitatively examine the drivers and outcomes of the US dental therapy movement through a health equity lens, including community engagement, implementation and dissemination, and access to oral health care. DTs have now been adopted in 13 states and several Tribal nations. ĭental therapists (DTs) are primary care dental providers, used globally, and were introduced in the United States (US) in 2005. The work cannot be changed in any way or used commercially without permission from the journal.

#Dental office toolkit minnesota license#

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives License 4.0 (CCBY-NC-ND), where it is permissible to download and share the work provided it is properly cited.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.Ĭorrespondence to: Elizabeth Mertz, PhD, MA, Healthforce Center at UCSF, Box 1242, 490 Illinois Street, Floor 11, San Francisco, CA 94143. The contents are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by HRSA, HHS, or the US Government. WKKF provided comments on this manuscript.Īdditional funding provided by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of an award totaling $448,203. WKKF has long supported oral health activities as part of their vision of a nation that marshals its resources to assure that all children have an equitable and promising future-a nation in which all children thrive. WKKF has a mission to support children, families and communities as they strengthen and create conditions that propel vulnerable children to achieve success as individual and contributors to the larger community and society. Support for this research was primarily provided by the W.K. ‡Center for Health Workforce Studies, School of Public Health, University at Albany, State University of New York, Rensselaer, NY †Preventive and Restorative Dental Sciences, School of Dentistry, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA

*Healthforce Center, University of California, San Francisco