As rural stakeholders from around the country take time today
to celebrate Nov. 16th as National Rural Health Day, DentaQuest reaffirms
its commitment to improving the oral health of residents living in rural
communities. DentaQuest Institute and DentaQuest Foundation have been involved
in multiple activities and initiatives in recent years that help to improve
oral health access and quality of oral health care for our nation’s rural
residents.
A few of the highlights include:
- The Institute’s Medical Oral Expanded Care (MORE Care) Initiative, which focuses on the integration of oral health care into the rural primary care practice as well as the development of coordinated care networks with community dental providers, has assisted more than 20 rural primary care practices and dental providers in South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Colorado. Based on learnings from the MORE Care initiatives in the three states, several publications were created to spread resources and knowledge to other rural communities interested in creating rural interprofessional oral health networks.
- White Paper - “MORE Care: Narrowing the Rural Interprofessional Oral Health Gap” https://www.dentaquestinstitute.org/rural-ipp
- Rural Practice Guide – Released today – that provides practice-level guidance and practical how-to tips for rural health clinics interested in creating interprofessional oral health networks in their community: http://bit.ly/2AQ0LmR
- The Foundation’s support of the National Rural Health Association has enabled community health workers and other providers in Texas to be trained to integrate oral health into their outreach to residents living in colonias, Hispanic-populated communities along the U.S.-Mexico border.
- DentaQuest Foundation grantee National Conference of State Legislatures is educating policymakers on issues that challenge rural communities in their access to oral health care, developing and publishing resources that can be found on their website, here.
- Lastly, we’ve been proud to see some of our rural oral health leaders featured in The Journal of Rural Health and also NRHA’s Compendium of Rural Oral Health Best Practices.
For more information on these and other great projects being
led by our Institute and Foundation teams, please visit the websites at www.dentaquestinstitute.org and www.dentaquestfoundation.org.
You can also sign up for Socious, our Foundation’s online collaborative
platform, to access resources and tools generated by our grantees and partners.
Register here: www.oralhealth.network