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Oral Health
Community Catalyst is committed to improving the health and well-being of vulnerable children and families by addressing racial and ethnic disparities to ensure that every community has access to quality, affordable dental care. Oral health is essential to overall health, with poor oral health being linked to heart disease, clogged arteries, stroke and other serious health problems. It can also severely impact an individual’s employment opportunities, work productivity and quality of life by causing chronic pain, impaired speech development, preventing opportunities for good nutrition and interfering with school attendance and success in learning. However, roughly 83 million Americans still face barriers to dental care. For more than 50 million children and adults in the United States, one of the biggest barriers is living in areas without enough dentists. For many others, it’s a question of affordability; an issue that more than 8 in 10 Americans (84 percent) think is a problem, according to a 2011 national survey conducted by Lake Research Partners.
Community Catalyst offers in-depth organizational development for organizations and networks of state consumer health advocacy organizations to help them increase their organizational effectiveness and move forward their mission of expanding access to oral health care
- May 14, 2013 Economic Viability of Dental Therapists This report assesses the economic viability of services provided by practicing midlevel dental providers in the U.S. and shows that they are expanding preventive dental care to people who need it most: children and those who can't afford care.
- May 14, 2013 Infographic: Dental Therapists Are A Smart Investment Dental therapists are increasing access to oral health care especially for those who need it most: low-income families, people of color, people living in rural areas, and those on Medicaid.
- June 07, 2012 Letter to Senator Bernard Sanders Regarding Comprehensive Dental Health Legislation Community Catalyst supports Senator Sanders' legislation to systematically improve access to oral health care services, including the extension of comprehensive dental insurance to millions of Americans.
- November 04, 2011 Letter to Dr. Jerilyn Glass on Priming the Pump of Primary Care Community Catalyst comments specifically on the Advisory Committee on Training in Primary Care Medicine and Dentistry report's recommendation to support the outcomes measures of the various expansions in dental workforce models currently being developed in the United States.