1802-13894

This investment supports the Petersburg Wellness Consortium (PWC) to act as a lead grassroots convener in the Petersburg community as part of the Grassroots Engagement Strategy. The Petersburg Oral Health Engagement Project of the PWC uses a multi-prolonged approach to facilitate engagement with various leadership and grassroots groups with the long-term view of developing capacity and sustainability to address oral health concerns. During the past year, PWC worked to increase awareness within community partners on the importance of oral health integration and provided them with training and resources to better equip them in disseminating information to the community; build capacity within the community to effectively advocate for oral health integration; and extend the advocacy activities and to expand the breadth of community partner networks to advocate for oral health integration at the state and local levels. Upcoming work builds on this momentum and extends the reach, diversity, and capacity of the consortium, especially through mini grants to community partners. $100,000 will support a dedicated manager to train and support grantee partners, mini grants, local travel, and meeting expenses. The Year 4 workplan drives to policy, financing, care, and community systems change. 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.