Oral Health Integration: A Call to Action

Abstract

M y last column focused on patients with serious mental illness. This column will focus on oral health. Why this focus on clinical topics, and why am I again cowriting the presidential column with a colleague? What both of these clinical topics share in common is how poorly they are integrated into the core curriculum of family medicine. Patients with serious mental illness suffer profoundly and as I described in my last column, we are missing opportunities to teach our learners how to integrate care for this vulnerable group of patients. Patients with poor oral health also frequently come to our offices in severe distress, and our learners are puzzled about the artificial separation between oral health and the rest of the body. This column is a call to action to better integrate oral health care into our curriculum. I am writing this column with the leader of the STFM Collaborative on Oral Health to draw attention to the powerful role of collaboratives in our organization. Stephanie Gill has used the Collaborative on Oral Health as an effective advocacy tool to remind us of the importance of oral health in the care of our patients. Key linkages have been found between many systemic diseases and oral health, both in their manifestation and treatment. 1-6 Poor oral health can also negatively impact quality of life and cause significant pain and disability. 7-9 Unfortunately, oral health remains an area of profound unmet need for many of our patients. More than a third of adults ages 20-44 years, and nearly one in five children ages 5-19 years had untreated dental caries during 2011-2014. 10 These statistics are even worse for racial and ethnic subpopulations.

Use of the Fluoride Varnish Billing Code in a Tertiary Care Center Setting

“…Oral health education for medical providers has to be a priority. 31 In 2003, the Office of the Surgeon General released a national call to action to promote oral health. 32 Findings from the report, Oral Health in America, were the main impetus for the call 33 ; dental caries was the single most common chronic childhood disease with 50% of 5- to 9-year-old children had at least 1 cavity or filling, and with striking disparities in dental disease by household income.…”

The Oral Health Care Provider’s Role in Management of the MOUD Patient

“…The Society of Teachers of Family Medicine has played an important role in the integration of oral health in family medicine. 3 This reader hopes that any evolution of this learning collaborative would include oral health care providers because we would appreciate the opportunity to play a role in improved patient outcomes within a team-based approach.…”

Entering, Linked with the Sphinx: Lysophosphatidic Acids Everywhere, All at Once, in the Oral System and Cancer

“…The mouth is the entrance portal to the body. Oral health is integral to general health, and some chronic diseases show a bidirectional association (reviewed in [ 1 , 2 ]); medical professionals often have limited knowledge of this connection as few programs teach oral health [ 3 , 4 ]. Some of these associations include chronic oral infections and diabetes, heart and lung conditions, some adverse pregnancy outcomes, and osteoporosis [ 5 ].…”