Goal: By 2025 every Maine child will have the oral health care and resources needed to reach kindergarten with a healthy mouth (no active decay or other oral disease).
A major goal of the Network’s efforts is the integration of oral health into primary care, especially to ensure access to prevention at well-child visits in the first years of life before many children are able to establish a dental home. COHN's Health Integration Action Team has been working on several initiatives to further this goal including:
- Expanding From the First Tooth to help more primary care providers build oral health assessments, education, and fluoride varnish into well-child visits for young children. This effort includes recruiting and maintaining communication with a growing number of practices statewide, and offering training and other implementation supports to participating practices.
- Testing the Virtual Dental Home model to help children in Head Start settings get connected to a dental home while receiving all of their preventive care in their preschool setting. [Read more on the Virtual Dental Home Pilot]
- Developing a prototype of an innovative approach to embedding oral health services and dental providers into the primary care team, enabling expanded screening and earlier interventions to arrest decay and support families in accessing timely restorative treatment.
Resources
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FTFT 2020 data poster
presented at 2021 Maine Public Health Association annual conference -
For more information: please fill out our form here or contact Network Partner, Maine Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatricians: Dee Kerry dee.kerry@maineaap.org