New: A Guide For School Districts and their Partners This guidebook is a comprehensive approach to oral health education policy in schools. It is a helpful tool for school board members and superintendents to develop local polices to address oral health in their schools. |  | | | View PDF - Share |
DHF Reports
06/11/2009, DHF, "Eliminating Medi-Cal Adult Dental: Costs and Consequences"
The 2009-2010 budget agreement by the California legislature and signed into law on February 20, 2009, eliminates the Denti-Cal program for adults ("Adult Dental"), a critical source of dental services for more than 3 million poor, disabled and elderly adults in California. This report describes the significant, adverse short- and longterm costs to the State budget and the State economy due to elimination of the Adult Dental program.
View PDF 05/19/2008, DHF, "Adult Dental Medi-Cal Cuts: Costs & Benefits"
The report shows that while Denti-Cal’s elimination would result in only a minor reduction in state outlays, it would cause the loss of at least $115 million of federal matching funds, substitute more expensive services for less expensive treatments and preventive services, and exacerbate the problems of the safety net by placing more pressure on community clinics and emergency rooms.
View PDF 06/07/2007, DHF, "Putting Teeth Into Healthcare"
This policy brief focuses on the importance of including oral health in health care reform efforts. This includes, the extent of current dental coverage, barriers to utilization, and policy considerations for improving the oral health of all Californians.
View PDF 02/06/2006, DHF, "Mommy It Hurts to Chew"
AKA 2006 Needs Assessment Survey
DHF,in partnership with CDAF, Department of Health Services, Office of Oral Health and Maternal and Child Health Branch and CDHA, screened over 20,000 children in kindergarten and third grade to determine the oral health status of children in California.
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01/01/2000, DHF, "The Oral Health of California's Children: Halting a Neglected Epidemic"
The Children's Dental Health Initiative's five-step action plan for halting the epidemic of children's dental disease is the result of two years' work by a coalition of public, private, and public health leaders to pinpoint long-term solutions to children's dental problems.
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Other Reports
09/2009, Dental Cuts Bite Children, Cost All Californians:The Case for Investing in School-Based Preventive Services.
California’s policymakers have recently slashed the budgets of children’s health and dental programs. To prevent a significant increase in costly and damaging dental disease among the state’s children, leaders must quickly and creatively invest in preventive dental services. Successful programs and funding models from other states can point the way. Three cuts during the 2009-10 state budget cycle were particularly harmful to children’s dental health. View PDF 09/2009, California HealthCare Foundation, Coverage Matters: The Role of Insurance in Access to Dental Care in California
This issue brief explores the relationship between dental insurance, out-of-pocket spending on dental services, and overall oral health using results from a 2007 survey of Californians by Harris Interactive. The analysis finds that while dental insurance enables people to obtain dental care, it does not remove all financial barriers to needed services. View Article 09/2009, California HealthCare Foundation, Dental Insurance in California: Scope, Structure, and Availability
This issue brief examines the basic structure of dental insurance to illustrate how it enables Californians' access to dental care. View Article
09/2009, Oral Histories: Report from a Dental Fair for Uninsured Adults
Report from a Dental Fair for Uninsured Adults, and a companion video of the same title, profile patients attending a dental fair in rural Virginia to highlight the impact of lack of coverage for oral health services on adults. Although most of those seeking free care at the fair had jobs, few had dental coverage and most lacked any health insurance at all. Uninsured adults have vast oral care needs, and untreated dental problems can have serious health, employment and social consequences, highlighting the relationship between inadequate benefits and unmet health needs.View PDF 08/2008, California HealthCare Foundation, The Good Practice: Treating Underserved Dental Patients While Staying Afloat
California's low reimbursement rates for Medicaid dental services stand as a major obstacle to improving the oral health of its low-income population. Denti-Cal, the state's primary public financer for dental care, has some of the lowest payments in the nation, offering dentists just 30% of customary fees. As a result, only four in ten California dentists accept Denti-Cal patients. View Article
07/2008, The Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, Dental Coverage and Care for Low-Income Children: The Role of Medicaid and SCHIP
Tooth decay is the most common chronic illness among children. Although it is firmly established that oral health is an integral component of children’s overall health and wellbeing, a large share of children do not receive recommended preventive and primary oral health care, and dental care is their most prevalent unmet health care need. Difficulties obtaining dental care disproportionately affect low-income and minority children. Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) are major sources of dental coverage, reaching millions of low-income children, but inadequate access to dental care among these children remains a critical health policy challenge. View PDF
07/2008, The Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, Filling An Urgent Need: Improving Children's Access to Dental Care in Medicaid and SCHIP
Critical inadequacies in access to oral health care in the U.S., particularly in the low-income population, have been a focus of increasing concern in the health policy community in recent years. As understanding of the adverse and potentially tragic consequences of lacking dental care has grown, efforts at the state level to improve low-income children’s access to oral health care have gained substantial momentum. In this environment, in October 2007, the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured and the National Academy for State Health Policy convened a day-long meeting of policy officials and oral health experts to discuss children’s access to dental care in Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and exchange information and perspectives on the strategies have worked best to improve it. Given the primary role of Medicaid and SCHIP in covering children, strengthening these programs is a promising and logical approach to increasing children’s access to oral health care. View PDF
03/21/2008, California HealthCare Foundation, "The Effects of Medicaid Reimbursement Rates on Access to Dental Care"
The California HealthCare Foundation (CHCF) commissioned a report exploring the role of Medicaid reimbursement rates in access to dental services across the nation. The study examined several states' experiences with increased reimbursement and the impact on service use. Attached is a CHCF issue brief on the study as well as the actual report, which was done by the National Academy for State Health Policy.
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03/21/2008, "Eliminating Adult Coverage in Medicaid: An Analysis of the Massachusetts Experience."
This report examines the impact of the MassHealth dental coverage reductions. It is based on information collected between September 2004 and June 2005 through structured interviews with thirteen dental providers in the state, two focus groups with current MassHealth enrollees who had dental care needs, and an analysis of state administrative data.
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Briefs07/2008, The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, Access to Affordable Dental Care: Gaps for Low-Income Adults
Although oral health has long been acknowledged as a critical component of overall health and well-being, millions of Americans lack access to affordable dental health services. Oral health problems can be early signs of and even lead to other types of serious diseases. Untreated oral health conditions can cause disfiguring tooth loss and decay that can limit employment options and lower self-esteem. While regular dental care can prevent and treat many oral health problems, financial barriers pose significant dental access problems for many low-income families.
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06/26/08, Jared Fine, DDS, Responding to California's Dental Health Care Crisis
Disparities in oral health and in access to care exist when there are factors or barriers for clients, factors or barriers for providers and factors or barriers within the system or environment that inhibit or prevent what could support access to care and positive oral health.
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06/27/2008, Francisco Ramos-Gomez, DDS, MS, MPH, Oral Health Disparities among Latinos in Californai: Implications for a Binational Agenda."
California's Latinos have disproportionately lower oral health rankings and less access to dental care than any other ethnic group in our state. Latino children have higher rates of untreated dental disease than any other children in California.
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06/27/2008, Elizabeth Mertz, "Registered Dental Hygienists in Alternative Practice (RDHAP): Increasing Access to Dental Care in California."
Lack of access to dental care is a persistent problem for vulnerable populations in California, resulting in extensive dental disease among individuals in underserved communities.
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06/27/2008, Timothy T. Brown, Tracy Finlayson and Salar Jahedi, "Preliminary Findings - Access to Dental Care for California's Adult Immigrants and Their Children: Empirical Analysis, Policy Simulations and Recommendations."
Oral diseases are a majory cause of infection, tooth loss, and debilitating pain. Oral diseases can also create speech and eating difficulties and inhibit an individual's social interactions.
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05/20/2008, "What California Should Know About Other States’and Federal Efforts to Fund Children’s Oral Health."
Many other states, as well as the federal government, have already investigated ways to generate new revenue to improve children’s oral health care. For the well-being of its children and its future prosperity, California should do the same.
View PDF 03/21/2008, "Increasing Access to Dental Care in Medicaid: Does Raising Provider Rates Work?"
Dentist participation in Medicaid has been a persistent problem; fewer than one in four dentists reported seeing atleat 100 Medicaid patients in a year. The National Academy for State Health Policy conducted a review of all published literature on the experience of states regarding dental reimbursement rate increases, and the effect such increases have had on service utilization and provider participation.
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Articles08/10/2009, The Importance of Dental Coverage in our new Health Care Plan
Providing preventative health care is one of the most important strategies for lowering our nation’s health costs. We hear a lot about the 46 million Americans without health insurance, but rarely do we hear that more than twice that lack dental insurance. The case for dental coverage is the same as for health care. People without health care coverage often get sick with illnesses that could be treated at far less cost if caught early. When it comes to dental care, kids with minor tooth problems may end up with dental disease for the rest of their lives. This can hurt their ability to stay in school or get a job. Adults with missing teeth find it hard to get jobs as well.<view> 05/22/2008, Los Angeles Times, "Older L.A. County adults suffer from inadequate dental care"
Older adults in Los Angeles County are severely lacking dental insurance and many have cut back on oral healthcare because they cannot afford it, according to a broad new survey of men and women age 60 and older released this week... The results underscore the need for greater access to oral health coverage at a time when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed eliminating state-provided dental care for poor California adults to help cut a $17.2-billion state budget shortfall.
View PDF 05/20/2008, San Francisco Chronicle, "State budget to chop dental benefits for poor"
A new report released Monday, which analyzed the impact of eliminating most Medi-Cal dental benefits for adults - those living in nursing facilities are exempt - concludes that the budget proposal would cost the state $115 million in matching federal funds and cause far more expensive medical treatment. Overtaxed emergency rooms would become more crowded, and health issues for countless people would spiral.
View PDF 03/17/2008, Justice Talking, “What About Dental?”
Host Margot Adler speaks with professor and pediatric dentist Burton Edelstein about the relationship between dental care and overall health.
Listen to audio: Windows Media, MP3 (©2008, Justice Talking).
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