1510-11517

National: Support to the National Rural Health Association (NRHA) to launch a National Rural Health Initiative that includes activities centered on policy, communications, education, and research. Specifically, the NRHA will develop a rural oral health interest group within the organization to provide policy and legislative analysis, work through the various communication avenues within the association and with partnering networks to disseminate oral health information, highlight rural oral health best practices within the array of educational events coordinated by the association, and advance rural oral health-related research though the association’s Journal of Rural Health. These four approaches would enable the NRHA to further enhance support to rural communities as their work to solve their oral health care challenges and raise awareness of solutions to these challenges. This proposal will help support improvement across all four systems, and will promote the Oral Health 2020 goal of improving public perception of the value of oral health within overall health and the target that oral health is increasingly included in health dialogue and public policy. $250,000 will support personnel time needed to implement the project, in-person and virtual meeting capacity, and production and subsequent dissemination of rural oral health knowledge products.