1702-12995

Virginia: Support to Smart Beginnings Virginia Peninsula (SBVP) to act as a lead convener in the Virginia Peninsula community as part of the Grassroots Engagement Strategy. SBVP has a focus on supporting the health of all children in the community to prepare them to enter the education system ready to learn and succeed in school. During Year 2 of the initiative, SBVP has focused on building and enhancing relationships with existing and new community partners who had demonstrated an interest in SBVP’s work. They have worked to create small focus area working groups for the following focus areas: data, clinics, elementary schools, public engagement, and emergency room. Oral Health 2020 investment of $100,000 will be used to partner with human services, WIC, public housing, and the school in Newport News and Hampton, among other things. Their public engagement activities in Year 3 will be focused on overall oral health awareness with an emphasis on reaching patents of school-aged children, pregnant women and parents of children on Medicaid. Specific goals for Year 3 include working with partner agencies to integrate oral health training into their employee orientation and ongoing staff development programs; providing an oral health awareness training segments for individuals receiving VIEW benefits in the Newport News and Hampton Departments of Human Services; delivering a series of public presentations throughout both cities, and within the three target communities; identifying and training a group of community influences, who will provide peer-based oral health awareness in “House Chats” with their neighbors; attending community events to provide materials, discuss oral health awareness, and identify potential community partners and advocates; beginning oral health policy work with the intent of protecting the legislative gains Virginia has made in the past 10 years with regard to oral health; and expanding the dental clinic at the Regional Health Department to serve all seeking care. 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.