1803-14113

This investment supports the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) to develop resources and design and implement a convening opportunity for state legislators and legislative staff in order to raise their awareness of oral health and policy opportunities adopted by other states.As an organization, NCSL represents all 7,383 state legislators and nearly 3,000 legislative staff. Leveraging its networks, NCSL will be able to transfer information about the importance of oral health, provide examples of effective policies and programs that improve the oral health of gap populations, and bring together important stakeholders with the authority to create progress in this field. Specifically, in 2018, NCSL will design and convene a pre-conference session at its Annual Legislative Summit focused on oral health integration for a targeted group of legislators and/or their staff and develop a network-wide webinar featuring state legiislators on oral health policies. $59,462 will be used to support personnel time needed to support the implementation of this work, meeting expenses associated with convening legislators/legislative staff, communications and marketing costs to develop and disperse materials, and administrative costs that support the execution of the proposed work. This proposal aligns with the Oral Health 2020 goal to improve the public perception of the value of oral health to overall health, and the target that by 2020, oral health is increasingly included in health dialogue and public policy.