The Interface Between Medicine and Dentistry
in Meeting the Oral Health Needs of Young Children
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Dental care in this country is provided by private and safety net systems of care that are independent of medical primary care systems. As a result, children who are followed for primary medical care typically do not have their oral health issues addressed by their physician or nurse practitioner. One of the greatest challenges in attempting to improve oral health is better coordination of the medical and dental primary care systems. However, integrating these separate organizational, financing, and delivery systems is challenging because of a number of unresolved "interface" issues.
The Children's Dental Health Project (CDHP) and the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry (AAPD) have partnered in a grant to develop literature exploring the issues that have been raised by dentists and physicians about coordination of medical and dental primary systems. This grant, titled "Interfaces: Explicating the Interfaces between Primary Care Dentistry and Medicine for At-Risk Young Children," is made under AAPD's Filling Gaps project, a component of the HRSA/Maternal and Child Health Bureau's S-CHIP Community Integrated Services Systems program. The goal of Filling Gaps is to identify and develop best practice protocols and training materials to increase the access of preschool children to dental care and to improve their dental health.
Interfaces has produced a paper describing each of six interface issues:
The six background papers have been summarized in a white paper and executive summary (pdf). The white paper was distributed to 60 communities of interest for comment. Nine experts from medicine, dentistry and health policy have written responses to the white paper, and the Interfaces project has produced a summary of these responses.
