1602-11939

Florida: Support to the Human Services Coalition of Dade County, Inc. (Catalyst Miami) to act as a lead convener in the Miami community as part of the Grassroots Engagement Strategy. Catalyst Miami amplifies the voice of low-to-moderate income and marginalized individuals and families in Miami-Dade County, to improve their quality of life through self-empowerment, advocacy, and capacity-building programs for community based organizations, and the facilitation of networks around improved health. Key successes in year one included the creation of the Miami Dade Oral Health Network (MDOHN), which includes organizational partners from community based organizations, service providers, academic institutes, and governmental agencies. The marquee event of the Miami-Dade Oral Health Network in Year One was the Miami-Dade Oral Health Equity Summit. The summit was designed to convene stakeholders from the grasstops, grassmiddle, and grassroots to discuss the current state of oral health in the county, and laid the ground work for engagement strategies to raise awareness of oral health disparities and create a process for brining Miami-Dade residents into the oral health movement. Nearly 90 individuals representing various community stakeholders attended the summit. Oral Health 2020 investment of $100,000 will be used to support three specific objectives for Year Two’s engagement focused work. The first is to build the local capacity of core Miami-Dade Oral Health Network partners so as to create the beginning of decentralized oral health community engagement nodes. The second objective is to create a new and accurate awareness of oral health within communities, both low-to-moderate income and otherwise. The third objective is to create a new, accessible, and central way for residents to access reliable information regarding oral health, and get involved in a process to set an oral health agenda for Miami-Dade County moving into Year Three. All of these objectives will be fulfilled by employing Catalyst Miami’s core methodology of building local networks, reaching non-traditional stakeholders, and sharing pertinent, consistent, and accurate information broadly across Miami-Dade County. This investment aligns with the Oral Health 2020 goal to improve the public perception of the value of oral health to overall health.