R-2404-21141

Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s (CDPHE) Oral Health Unit’s interest in expanding school-based oral health (SBOH) efforts is aligned with a renewed focus on increasing dental screening in schools. Recent legislation proposes a dental screening pilot program that could scale to statewide implementation in coming years. In addition, Colorado’s new Universal Pre-Kindergarten program includes a requirement that all registered students receive a dental screening. With these new efforts in mind, this proposal seeks to understand additional facilitators and barriers to the scaling of oral health screening in communities with barriers to care. OHU will partner with communities
to design, test, and implement SBOH services in new settings, utilizing school nurses; increase resources to support SBOH implementation; and present findings to the Colorado Oral Health Coalition for policy considerations.

The OHU developed the Priority Community Index (PCI), which is a tool to prioritize resource allocation to counties with the highest oral health needs. Acknowledging the diverse cultural needs of each community in Colorado, they will engage with individual communities to design school based oral health services using data from the PCI. Each School Based Health Center has a youth advisory group, and the CPHE maintains a youth advisory council. By designing various models across the state, they acknowledge one size doesn’t fit all, and can inform other states on how to expand school services using this model.

Oral Health Unit at CDPHE is requesting $125,000 for this work which is less than 6% of the organization’s overall budget. $48,132 will be utilized to support staff, $20,068 will be utilized for administrative costs, $30,000 for the Youth HealthCare Alliance participation, $9,000 for training incentives, $3,000 for community engagement stipends, and $8,000 to the Mesa County Valley School District to participate and expand programs in 2 schools.

This proposal is one of ten selected finalists for the School-Based and School-Linked Initiatives to Improve Oral Health RFP.