Integrating Oral Health Prevention into a Community-Based Program through Community-Academic Partnership

Background: Tooth decay is a chronic and infectious disease that is avoidable with early preventive measures, sustainable home care, and appropriate periodic dental visits. This project was a partnership between a dental school, medical school and community-based organization to 1) expand oral health prevention competencies of nurse and social work case managers and 2) promote prevention, including linkage to dental care for underserved children.

Methods: An oral health knowledge and confidence pretest questionnaire was administered to three nurse and two social work case managers (n=5). A curriculum was adapted from existing sources. Participants completed a 6-hour training. Knowledge and confidence post-test questionnaires were administered immediately following training, and at 1-week, and 3-months following training. Eight parents were recruited (24 children) from the community-based organization to participate in home-based oral health risk assessment, dental preventive education and linkage to care.

Results: Nurse and social work case managers demonstrated significant improvement in oral health knowledge and confidence (p<.05) and integrated oral health prevention into community-based practice over time. Among children who participated in the project 88% were identified as being at high-risk for dental caries and did not have a dental home. Of these, 50% received dental services from the dental faculty partner and 36% from community-based dental locations.

Conclusions: The multidisciplinary community-academic partnership demonstrates the effectiveness of training non-dental health professional in promoting oral health prevention and linking children to needed care. Nurse and social work case managers successfully integrated oral health prevention into routine care for children from low-income families.