Dental school given $1.5 million to improve access to care

COLUMBUS –The Ohio State University College of Dentistry is developing a plan to improve access to dental care for underserved Ohio adults and children while increasing the college’s recruitment and retention of minority students and faculty.

Called the OHIO project, or Oral Health Improvement through Outreach, the effort was awarded a five-year, $1.5 million grant late last year through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The college, collaborating with medical professionals, government and education officials, and community advocates, was one of 10 in the country to receive a grant to promote community-based dental education.

The OHIO project is the result of a state analysis in 1998 that identified access to dental care as the No. 1 unmet health-care need in Ohio.

Dr. Canise Bean, assistant professor in the College of Dentistry and the project director, said the initiative has two primary objectives in reversing oral disease affecting the poor, elderly and members of racial and ethnic groups.

“Our first priority is to develop a service-learning program through our student providers that will help improve access to oral care for members of our communities who are both under- and uninsured,” Bean said. “Secondly, we want to increase the recruitment and retention of students and faculty of varied ethnic backgrounds in the college.”

Dr. Jan Kronmiller, dean of the college, said the project benefits many.

“The OHIO project is a great opportunity for the college as we give students a sense of the oral health needs of Ohioans; build stronger relationships with our practice colleagues; and enhance the future dental workforce,” Kronmiller said.

Graduating dental students currently perform 20 days of patient care at area facilities including Columbus Children’s Hospital, the Columbus Clinic, and the Ohio State Nisonger Center for Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities. They also participate in a community-based dental treatment program for the elderly in Appalachia.

Bean said once the grant is fully developed, outreach efforts will significantly increase beyond Franklin County. Dental hygiene students and graduate program residents will be included.

“Ultimately, in the final year of the grant, we will have our students providing dental services for up to 60 days at community sites statewide,” Bean said. “The partnerships the college is building among community organizations, hospitals and schools have already enabled us to identify outreach sites in Cincinnati, Zanesville and Coshocton.”

She added that teaching diversity and building a diverse unit of faculty and student practitioners are essential.

“Dean Kronmiller is extremely supportive and recognizes that the face of those seeking healthcare in today’s world has really changed,” Bean said.

“We know that we will have to incorporate cultural training inside the walls of the college because of the vast disparities that exist among people of varying ethnicities,” she said. “Ideally we want our first-year students to be immediately exposed to this element of care and for all of our students to feel confident and welcomed regardless of their environment.”

Bean said community service is critical to the college and to the success of the OHIO project.

“Along with providing dental care, we want to instill in our students an ethic of community service and to impress upon them that there is a socially responsible element that goes along with being a dental professional,” Bean said. “If we are successful, their service-learning experiences through the OHIO project will become lasting solutions to what former Surgeon General David Satcher described in May 2000 as the ‘silent epidemic’ of dental and oral diseases.”