1702-12992

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. BCCF’s key successes in Year 2 included training workers from over a dozen new organizations in the realities of oral health issues in our communities; participating in various community events to carry messages around oral health; recruiting new partners to participate in the collaborative planning process for community engagement; and developing a plan of action that will help clarify mixed messages among the professional community, ensure effective dissemination of oral health-specific information and resources, and empower citizens to navigate the oral health system and advocate for their own needs. Oral Health 2020 investment of $100,050 will be used to carry the following four goals: 1) effectively reach and educate expectant mothers, parents and caregivers of children under five years old on oral health best practices and ensure they can easily find where to go to access these services; 2) ensure that pediatricians and dentists across Berks County have access to and are sharing the same oral health recommendations with new parents and parents of children under three years old; 3) increase the number of places and programs that provide oral health services so that parents with children under five years old can easily get to a dental provider who can check, refer and/or treat their children’s oral health; and 4) incorporate oral health as a permanent program in Berks County schools and pre-schools, including sealant programs for all first and second grade students. All actions described in the proposal work plan for the Year 3 work were organized around the systems change framework (policy, financing, care and community). This proposal aligns with the Oral Health 2020 Goal 6 of improving the public perception of the value of oral health to overall health and the target that oral health is increasingly included in health dialogue and public policy.