1802-14020

This funding supports the Texas Health Institute (THI) in producing a 10-year study to identify and describe hospital utilization trends for oral health conditions in Texas. The purpose of this project is to support the establishment of an adult-dental benefit in Texas, building off of collective work happening right now across the state. While this project is not a renewal, it is ancillary and largely woven into the larger policy strategy happening in Texas. As well, this project builds on successes that occurred in 2017, in which THI, the Texas Oral Health Coalition, and new to the OH2020 Network, the Coalition for Texans with Disabilities approached the Texas legislature about an adult-dental benefit. This resulted in the 85th Texas legislature passing an appropriations bill commissioning a study to review and examine the impact of providing dental services to disabled adults in Texas, which is happening currently and will frame legislative conversations around incremental policy change. This project will build on the aforementioned study focused on differently-abled adults and examine a broader population of adults as well as a broader portfolio of data metrics such as using both inpatient and outpatient data available through the Texas Health Care Information Council from 2006-2016. This study will be framed around work done by Dr. Natalie Chalmers and her team at the DentaQuest Institute as their published efforts have successfully supported the passing of adult dental benefit legislation in Maryland. This project aligns with the OH2020 goal and target around increasing the number of states that have an adult dental benefits. The budget for this project is $88,000 with half of the amount paying for staff time to mine and analyze the data and the other half is to purchase the inpatient ($19,800) and outpatient ($19,800) data.