In the News

Kaz Rafia, DDS, was appointed chief health equity officer at the CareQuest Institute for Oral Health. Read the full article.

Not having access to dental care can lead to serious oral and overall health issues, not to mention more intensive care later on.

Opportunities exist and have been successful adding oral health risk assessment and dental hygiene education into primary care visits, inpatient hospital wards, and many federally qualified health centers (FQHCs). For example, CareQuest Institute for Oral Health Improvement launched a pilot program in Massachusetts, the COVID-19 Oral Health Recovery and Transformation (COHRT) Learning Community.9 COHRT focused on teledentistry in oral health disease prevention, minimally invasive care, and integrated and personalized treatment.

Leaders and organizations in healthcare and dentistry, including the ADA and the American Dental Hygienists' Association (ADHA) are asking U.S. lawmakers to add extensive adult dental benefits to every state Medicaid program to improve oral health equity and access. Read the full article. 

All of this leads to significant disparities. For CareQuest Institute for Oral Health's State of Oral Health Equity in America 2022 survey, individuals were asked if they or someone in their household had an intellectual or developmental disability, and those who answered yes were described as being "part of the IDD community." The results of the survey revealed that a higher percentage of individuals in the IDD community rated their oral health as fair or poor (38%) when compared with those outside of the IDD community (23%).

The nonprofit CareQuest Institute for Oral Health is partnering with the Center for Integration of Primary Care and Oral Health (CIPCOH) on a campaign to designate 50 Oral Health Champions (one in each state) during the next decade to work with health profession schools and programs to integrate oral health into their primary care curricula and bridge gaps in oral health access. 

Costs as a deterrent to care… Growing racial disparities across the system… Lack of access to dental coverage.

“The AMA just created a transformative mechanism for payors to support medical teams to control tooth decay with a breakthrough medicine,” said Jeremy Horst Keeper, DDS, PhD, director of clinical innovation at CareQuest Institute Partners and one of the authors of the code. “SDF is carefully brushed on to cavities and repeated periodically, stopping a great majority of them. It also prevents new cavities more efficiently than anything we’ve ever seen before.

A recent survey conducted by CareQuest Institute for Oral Health found that 29% of adults cited lack of insurance as a reason to avoid future dental care, 27% cited cost, 18% cited the COVID-19 pandemic, 11% said they had no reason to go, and 9% cited dental anxiety.

Massachusetts ranks among the top states in the nation for health care. A number of female leaders guide its success, according to a recent report.