1602-11944

Pennsylvania: Support to the Berks County Community Foundation (BCCF) to act as a lead grassroots convener in the Berks County and City of Reading communities as part of the Grassroots Engagement Strategy. As a community foundation, BCCF has a well-developed network of partnerships throughout the community working towards improved quality of life for residents. In an effort to dig deeper into the oral health landscape of Berks County in Year One, BCCF embarked on a series of grassroots surveys: youth, adult and migrant workers. Additionally, BCCF has a survey currently underway for senior adults with limited mobility. During this survey process, BCCF widened the circle of professionals and grassroots represented on their existing oral health community task force to include libraries, youth and senior group leaders, school hygienists, migrant worker groups and Latino groups. These surveys of over 1,700 individuals reinforced the F&M data and provided more detail which (1) linked dental care to insurance, (2) indicated that senior adults living in urban areas and farm workers were less likely to have regular care when compared to the County as a whole and (3) despite the benefit of fluoride in the City tap water, 80% of City youth drank bottled water at home vs. 45% of the youth in the rest of the County. Follow-up focus groups indicated that this was due to a number of perceptions regarding taste, smell, source of the water and cultural beliefs that the tap water was not safe to drink. Oral Health 2020 investment of $100,000 will be used to take action on the findings from the landscape assessment, key focus areas for the next year will be to deepen BCCF’s understanding of the level of awareness surrounding oral health for Berks County, to launch a campaign to increase the level of awareness and civic participation in change strategy development, and to create partnerships with our oral health consumer population to enable their voices to be heard and their needs met. BCCF will specifically target parents who need to advocate for their children, the low-income populations who cannot afford care or cannot find care, the consumers who may not know how to navigate the complex oral health care system, the farm workers, and any other group that is part of the under-served population. This investment aligns with the Oral Health 2020 goal to improve the public perception of the value of oral health to overall health.