Addressing Disparities in Children's Oral Health: A Dental‐Medical Partnership to Train Family Practice Residents

Abstract

Providing oral health care to rural populations in the United States is a major challenge. Lack of community water fluoridation, dental workforce shortages, and geographical barriers all aggravate oral health and access problems in the largely rural Northwest. Children from low-income and minority families and children with special needs are at particular risk. Familycentered disease prevention strategies are needed to reduce oral health disparities in children. Oral health promotion can take place in a primary care practitioner's office, but medical providers often lack relevant training. In this project, dental, medical, and educational faculty at a large academic health center partnered to provide evidence-based, culturally competent pediatric oral health training to family medicine residents in five community-based training programs. The curriculum targets children birth to five years and covers dental development, the caries process, dental emergencies, and oral health in children with special needs. Outcome measures include changes in knowledge, attitudes, and self-efficacy; preliminary results are presented. The program also partnered with local dentists to ensure a referral network for children with identified disease at the family medicine training sites. Pediatric dentistry residents assisted in didactic and hands-on training of family medicine residents. Future topics for oral health training of family physicians are suggested.

Medical students' child oral‐health‐related knowledge, practices and attitudes

“…One avenue that has been suggested for combating this problem and improving access to oral health care has been attempting to recruit primary care physicians to play a more active role with regard to oral health issues . Unfortunately, these studies are few and limited in their generalisability.…”

Oral health: An important determinant of the health of children

“…Given that most infants of this age do not come in to contact with the dental profession, rather their parents seek advice from a range of primary care providers, it is being increasingly recognised internationally that cross‐disciplinary efforts are required to achieve a reduction in disease burden associated with childhood dental caries. Such efforts include developing an oral health curriculum for medical students, 12 training primary care physicians to identify infants at risk of dental disease 13 and developing evidence‐based clinical guidelines for paediatricians that address common risk factors such as those done by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health in the UK 14 . The education strategy within the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in Australia presents an opportunity to better integrate oral health into the training and ongoing professional development of physicians and paediatricians.…”

Brighter Smiles

“…They are now aware of the physician's role in improving child oral health. 13 Certainly, since young children more commonly see a physician than a dentist and given that there will never be enough dental professionals to treat existing dental disease, physicians can play a strategic role in resolving the public health disaster of dental caries in First Nations children. 12 Early indicators of the effect of Brighter Smiles on oral health are represented by results of the FNIHB dentist's yearly oral examinations.…”