1602-11940

Florida: Support to the Tampa Bay Healthcare Collaborative (TBHC) to act as a lead convener in the Tampa Bay region as part of the Grassroots Engagement Strategy. TBHC is a regional network of health and social service organizations, providers, agencies, and community programs addressing the health and healthcare needs in the Tampa Bay. The "Achieving Oral Heath Equity in Tampa Bay" (AOHE) Initiative works to deepen the leadership capacity of grassroots organizations on a community, county and regional level. During the Year One learn/plan/assess phase, TBHC achieved the following outcomes: Collaborated with twenty (20) community-based organizations to administer more than 1,000 oral health surveys, partnered with seven (7) community-based organizations to host focus groups with 65 Tampa Bay residents, provided nearly 1,000 Tampa Bay residents with oral health awareness and education information, plus gave away 250 toothbrushes and tubes of toothpaste , held in-person meetings and/or conference calls with more than one-hundred (100) community stakeholders, built community capacity by giving more than $10,000 to community residents for participating in focus groups and completing oral health surveys, enriched seventeen (17) local community-based organizations by contributing nearly $3,000 in capacity building stipends, and engaged over fifty stakeholders in discussion via the Oral Health Community Forum, the Oral Health Planning Session or both; representing 33 organizations (non-profit and governmental) and 8 community members. Oral Health 2020 investment of $100,000 will be used to support 1) communitywide engagement in oral health advocacy efforts that bring residents and stakeholders into a systems change process, 2) explore opportunities to facilitate service coordination across Tampa Bay, 3) explore best practices and new ideas for integrating oral health and primary health care services, and 4) continue additional community assessment efforts. All actions described in the proposal work plan for the year two work were organized around the systems change framework (policy, financing, care and community). This investment aligns with the Oral Health 2020 goal to improve the public perception of the value of oral health to overall health.