1511-11639

National: Support to the Medicaid, Medicare, CHIP State Dental Association (MSDA) to coordinate the refinement and dissemination of its socio-economic return on investment analysis that informs the knowledge base necessary for policy makers and other oral health stakeholders to maintain and promote Medicaid oral health benefit programs across the country. Building on the work done during previous year, MSDA will continue to collaborate with Brandeis University, Heller School of Social Policy and Management to expand upon Year 1 findings and disseminate them to national audiences so that its work may be improved and transformed into useful tools that can be used to address existing oral health inequalities. Additionally, MSDA will update and make the National Profile of State Medical and CHIP Oral Health Programs available online as a public resource. Both deliverables will assist policy makers in evaluating the real economic cost of oral diseases and provide them with the evidence needed to understand the real impact of oral health endemic and find the appropriate channels to address it. This information will support the Oral Health 2020 goal of mandatory inclusion of an adult dental benefit in publicly funded health insurance and the specific target that at least 30 states have a comprehensive Medicaid adult dental benefit. $386,343 will support personnel, consultants, data purchase, and data analysis needed to implement the project.