1601-11870

National: Support to the Center for Health Care Strategies (CHCS) to cultivate the leadership and change-management skills, policy knowledge, and program/quality-improvement capacities of state Medicaid and public health dental directors through the State Dental Leadership Academy (SDLA). While building fundamental skills, the SDLA will promote collaboration between the two programs to improve statewide oral health, particularly for vulnerable populations. During Year 1 of this initiative, CHCS will engage up to five state pairs of the Medicaid dental and public health dental directors. The SDLA will help these pairs develop and implement a collaborative transformational project focused on a mutually agreed-upon goal. To achieve a national impact, CHCS will produce communication vehicles to share takeaways and lessons with other oral health program leaders and provide guidance around how to institutionalize the learnings and collaborative strategies. As the SDLA will advance state pairs’ overarching skills and leadership capacity, it has the potential to impact most Oral Health 2020 goals and a number of their targets. $266,628 will support the personnel and technical assistance and leadership training capacity necessary to implement this initiative.