Populations residing in rural America have lower rates of dental care utilization, higher rates of dental caries, less water fluoridation, and fewer dentists per capita when compared to those living in urban environments. Dental workforce shortages in rural communities are endemic, despite the research on best practices for enhancing the rural workforce. This report examines…
Care coordination is a strategy used to improve health outcomes and efficiency, but has not been widely adopted in the dental field. To test out care coordination in the field, a large dental accountable care organization participated in a pilot project where they retrained existing administrative staff to coordinate the care of high-risk patients. Following…
One of the major challenges the oral health workforce faces is those that affect patient access and outcomes. Although Medicare programs provide almost 15 million a year in GME payments to teaching hospitals, there is little information about how the US invests in training the podiatry workforce. This article evaluates Medicare GME payments to teaching…
Many physician assistant (PA) education programs provide training in oral health competencies. However, little is known about how this education translates to clinical practice. This article describes an online survey of a national sample of 2014 PA education program graduates to determine how many PAs are educated in oral health competencies and how this education…
Dentists are 1 of the top 5 opioid analgesic prescribers among health care professionals in the US. However, most of these prescriptions remain unused after dental surgery, with upwards of 100 million opioid analgesic pills estimated to be left unused. This report describes dentists’ opioid prescribing patterns for Medicaid beneficiaries in 2 very different states—Oregon…
Since the 1950’s, health organizations and policymakers have depended on dental public health (DPH) professionals to design and execute local and national oral health strategic plans, and implement community based programs to overcome barriers and disparities. In the US, DPH specialty programs are used to train DPH professionals to increase the available workforce and improve…
Dental therapists (DTs) are primary care dental providers, used globally, and were introduced in the United States (US) in 2005. DTs have now been adopted in 13 states and several Tribal nations. This article qualitatively examines the drivers and outcomes of the US dental therapy movement through a health equity lens, including community engagement, implementation…
With the graduation of more females from dental school, the dental profession is becoming more gender diverse. This study, conducted by the Oral Health Workforce Research Center (OHWRC), builds on previous work on gender diversity in dentistry. Researchers used data from the 2014-2018 American Community Survey (ACS) to evaluate the impact of dentists’ personal characteristics…
Studies estimate that approximately one-third of all opioid prescriptions (Rxs) from dentists are associated with nonsurgical dental procedures, which suggests unwarranted opioid use. This article discusses a study of adult Medicaid beneficiaries using administrative claims data from New York (NY) and Oregon (OR) (2014-2016) to examine opioid Rxs associated with nonsurgical dental visits.ArrayArticle Arrayhttps://jada.ada.org/article/S0002-8177(21)00705-4/fulltextFebruary 9,…
Many post-baccalaureate programs provide a way for underrepresented and disadvantaged students to improve their applications for medical education programs after graduating from college. These programs have changed significantly over the years and more research is needed to understand this evolution. This report describes a study that examined information about post-baccalaureate programs for dental schools and…
