G-2312-20097

The Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers (Mass League) is the primary care association in Massachusetts and a returning grantee to CareQuest Institute. Historically, Mass League's CareQuest Institute-funded work supported the development of the establishment of its internal Office of Oral Health Affairs and the piloting of COrHT, with more recent funding supporting the initial phase of the organization's anti-racist communications training series.

This past year, Mass League carried out a three-phased project to create a scalable, replicable educational module designed to improve interactions and outcomes between racially discordant patient-provider relationships in oral health. The League's work is an effort toward operationalizing social determinants of health and social risk factors in community health center dental department through creation of a formal framework that includes assessment. During the most recent grant period, the organization successfully:

Conducted qualitative interviews with oral health stakeholders (providers, patients, dental school partners, and dental department staff) to understand the perceptions on concordance and other social determinants;

Developed a communication primer to introduce oral health staff at health centers to communication strategies, with emphasized attention to BIPOC patients;

Engaged Tufts University School of Dental Medicine (TUSDM) to create educational content for a training series (two of the four modules drafted in 2023) for oral health staff at health centers;

Evaluated the training models via pre/post-training surveys to determine impact on staff, providers, and patients.

Mass League's work has also included partnerships with the MA Department of Public Health, the MassHealth Dental Advisory Committee, the Health Care for All Oral Health Advisory Taskforce, and other state primary care associations through NNOHA's PCA Oral Health Collaborative.

In 2024, Mass League plans to expand its learning modules, from two to four, to include modules focused on naming racism and how it operates in clinical settings as well as gender identity and expression. The modules will be designed for the Canvas learning management system, in partnership with TUSDM, through the spring and piloted at three community health center sites in the fall. The project team will evaluate its training models via pre- and post-training surveys in collaboration with the Mass League Institute for Health Equity to measure provider satisfaction. Additionally, the community health centers piloting the training will develop patient surveys that will be used to create a patient storyboard that captures their perceptions of the care experience.

This proposal demonstrates an intentional focus on anti-racism and education for oral health professionals working in community health centers, with opportunity to inform additional care settings. Project goals are centered on improving patient experience and promoting authentic patient-provider partnerships that lead to better outcomes. This year, the organization will officially develop and launch a learning management system-friendly training, in partnership with TUSDM, that will be publicly available to oral health providers and staff following its piloting and evaluation, which will also take place within the proposed grant period. Ultimately, Mass League plans to disseminate this resource to other states and advocate for the adoption of anti-racism training modules in oral health training. To accomplish this, the organization plans to collaborate with OPEN, the Primary Care Association Oral Health Collaborative, and its existing network of advocacy partners.

Mass League's proposal is being recommended for grant funding of $150,000, which is consistent with CareQuest Institute funding last year. The project budget includes support for project personnel and subgrants to the pilot health center sites, who are expected to engage their dentists, hygienists, and staff in the pilot training modules. Additionally, TUSDM will be contracted to collaborate on the development and hosting of the online modules. If funded, this grant would make up less than 1% of the organization's overall.