1712-13649

This investment supports the National Rural Health Association (NRHA) in its efforts to continue to support, facilitate, and convene the National Rural Health Initiative that includes activities centered on policy, communications, education, and research. Rural health continues to play a critical role in the national discourse and integrating oral health into that dialogue is an important next step in terms of supporting a comprehensive approach to health. Specifically, NRHA will maintain and convene the rural oral health interest group established in 2016, develop policy priorities for year 2 in concert with vested parties, continue to leverage NRHA communication channels to disseminate information about rural oral health, design and host a pre-convening session as a part of its annual conference that focuses on rural oral health, develop a State Rural Health Association Policy Toolkit on rural oral health and support oral health tracks at state conferences, and coordinate, host and evaluate a Rural Community Health Worker Training module focused on rural oral health care. These approaches would enable the NRHA to further enhance support to rural communities as their work to solve their oral health care challenges and raise awareness of solutions to these challenges. This proposal will help support improvement across all four systems, and will promote the Oral Health 2020 goal of improving public perception of the value of oral health within overall health and the target that oral health is increasingly included in health dialogue and public policy. $180,000 will support personnel time needed to implement the project, in-person and virtual meeting capacity, and production and subsequent dissemination of rural oral health knowledge products