CMK2 - Networks for Oral Health Integration: Integrated Care Models for Improving Equitable Access to Preventive Oral Health Services for Infants, Children and Pregnant Individuals in the Safety Net Setting

The Networks for Oral Health Integration (NOHI) Within the Maternal and Child Health Safety Net program, funded by the HRSA Maternal and Child Health Bureau, was created to improve access to and use of preventive oral health services for infants, children and pregnant individuals at high risk for oral disease through medical-dental integration. NOHI includes three networks: The Midwest Network for Oral Health Integration (Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, and Ohio), Transforming Oral Health for Families (District of Columbia, Maryland, New York, and Virginia), and the Rocky Mountain Network for Oral Health (Arizona, Colorado, Montana, and Wyoming). This interactive session will discuss perspectives and promising practices from each of these networks, describing how they developed and implemented medical-dental integration quality improvement models to enhance equitable access to oral health care for infants, children and pregnant individuals in primary care clinics within selected community health centers in their four-state region. Speakers will provide participants with specific lessons learned regarding implementation, sustainability, and leveraging data platforms to support oral health integration. Examples will be shared from health centers that adopted various models for oral health integration which increased opportunities for their patient populations to access necessary oral health services. Opportunity for Q&A will allow attendees to gain specific insight into their own centers’ readiness for medical-dental integration and identify resources available to move forward with integration activities.