G-1903-14975

The purpose of this grant is to support Children Now in continuing to engage and partner with stakeholders throughout the State of California to ensure young children and families have access to high quality, affordable oral health care services and to advocate for state and local policy infrastructure that supports increased access to oral health care, education, and prevention for all children. More specifically, the 2019 Children Now renewal will focus on strengthening the capacity of local health jurisdictions to sustain and implement local oral health strategic plans, building county-level data profiles to help identify needs and opportunities, continuing to capitalize on lessons learned from the medical-dental pilot and it's ability to strengthen a statewide surveillance system, and to weave together partnerships between state and local health officials, grassroots partners and the budding California Oral Health Network. Through being a connector and catalyst for change, Children Now will play a key role in identifying needs and potential policy/advocacy solutions that come from grassroots partners and local health jurisdictions and elevate them to a state level. This includes providing technical assistance grantees and local health departments to better understand the current policy landscape and engage in collective action efforts. This will also include gathering state-based data, disaggregating by race and age so as to lift up existing disparities, and providing leadership to grassroots partners and the California Oral Health Network on how to meaningfully plug in and align efforts. The budget for this project is $83,800 and will be used to support personnel time, communications, travel, and meeting expenses that contribute to the implementation of this project. This proposal aligns with the Oral Health 2020 goal of eradicating dental disease in children and the target of having 85% of children reach age 5 without a cavity.