Catalyst Institute — Knowledge to improve oral health
This site is an archive for information regarding The Catalyst Institute.
:The Catalyst Institute is committed to improving the effectiveness, efficiency and quality of oral health care through direct research, demonstration projects, education and training. To accomplish this mission, we:
- Collect, compile and analyze data
- Conduct independent evaluation of oral health programs
- Inform policy development through evidence-based findings and practice
- Develop and test innovative models of care through demonstration and pilot projects
- Communicate, disseminate, and educate on oral health issues
- Promote high quality, cost-effective dental benefits and services”
To that end, this site also provides a list of oral health resources.
Recent News
Oral Health America awards grant to MORE HEALTH
Jun 22, 2010 DentistryIQ
CHICAGO, Illinois–Oral Health America has awarded a Smiles Across America planning grant to MORE HEALTH in Tampa, Fla.
MORE HEALTH partners with Tampa General Hospital and All Children’s Hospital to bring educational health lessons to school children in the area.
“MORE HEALTH is a strong force in both Hillsborough and Pinellas Counties,” said OHA Board Chair George Rhodes.
“They have an enviable 20-year record of providing quality supplemental health education, including dental, to students in grades K through 12. MORE HEALTH has built outstanding relationships with the schools in both counties and will collaborate with its other partners to leverage school-based oral health services.”
The SAA grant allows MORE HEALTH to work with the Hillsborough County Oral Health Coalition and the Public Health Dental Program through the Florida Department of Health to develop an oral disease prevention program model for schools.
“We hope that at the end of this grant cycle we will have developed a pilot program with the school district’s approval to provide screening and sealants to children at high risk for oral disease,” said Karen Pesce, RN, executive director of MORE HEALTH.
For more information, visit www.oralhealthamerica.org.
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Oral Health America announces campaign
Jun 17, 2010 DentistryIQ
CHICAGO, Illinois–Oral Health America has announced launch of Fall for Smiles.
Fall for Smiles is a public messaging campaign conducted in collaboration with Oral Healthcare Can’t Wait, an initiative of the Dental Trade Alliance. The campaign begins in September 2010 to promote messages to consumers about the importance of self-care, good nutrition, regular dental visits, and tobacco avoidance in maintaining oral health.
During the campaign, OHA will announce the results of a public opinion survey on consumers’ beliefs about oral health. Sponsored by Oral Healthcare Can’t Wait and Plackers dental flossers, the survey of more than 1,000 adults and more than 1,000 children asked questions about oral care habits and perceptions.
Prior OHA surveys have shown that adults are unaware of the role that infectious bacteria play in tooth decay, and that time spent brushing teeth tends to diminish at nighttime and on weekends. This suggests that routines play a role in optimum oral care habits.
“The Fall for Smiles campaign is intended to bring the oral health community together to promote common messaging about what Americans can do to keep their mouths healthy,” said Beth Truett, president and CEO, Oral Health America.
“We are excited about the strong interest we have from the public and private sectors in a messaging campaign in the third quarter that reminds consumers about the importance of oral care routines as families are heading back to school and back to work.”
Fall for Smiles will include outreach to dental care providers through a participation booklet and kit created by Patterson Dental. The campaign will also dedicate a week to oral health issues faced by mature adults and older Americans, an initiative being sponsored by Aspen Dental. A “Tobacco Free Week” will focus on the oral health risks of tobacco use.
“Oral Healthcare Can’t Wait shares a common purpose with OHA’s Fall for Smiles campaign—to increase dental patient awareness,” said Gary Price, CEO, Dental Trade Alliance. “Our members are encouraged by the collaborative nature of this effort, and the multiple opportunities for outreach to patient populations and opinion leaders throughout the country.”
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Local health education initiative reaches milestone
By MARY SHEDDEN Published: June 19, 2010 Tampa Online
Sometimes, the littlest ideas can make the biggest difference.
Take, for example, local health education program More Health Inc. Twenty years ago, a few members of the Junior League of Tampa thought it would be cool to explain health and safety at local schools.
It was such a good thing that, after their three-year commitment was up, the group decided to keep it going. Little did they know that as of this spring, the program would reach more than 2 million Tampa Bay-area children, including 185,000 during the school year that just ended. That’s a number Veronica Lopez – student 2 million – cannot conceptualize.
“That’s way too many people to count in my head,” says Lopez, 8, a second-grader at Tampa’s Muller Elementary. Instead, she’s more interested in how the “Tooth Town Showdown” led to her first-time teeth cleaning.
Dental hygiene, firearm safety, nutrition and skin cancer are all topics local schoolchildren better understand because of the age-appropriate lessons offered by the nonprofit group, says Tampa dentist Randy Feldman, president of the More Health Board.
The group’s 24 classes are age-specific and taught by More Health teachers who visit individual campuses. The program is designed not to add to teachers’ workloads and to be portable, cost-efficient and interactive.
“They’re physical; they’re effective,” Feldman says of the classes. “These aren’t a bunch of DVDs sent to teachers, saying, ‘Watch this.’”
The program is critical, especially considering the state Department of Education hasn’t supported health education since 1990-91. In fact, the only required health credit for Florida high school students was eliminated in 2007.
Individual school districts decide how much health education they want to offer students, says Peggy Johns, Pinellas County Schools supervisor of health education. In Pinellas, there is a mandatory curriculum for students in elementary school and grades 6 and 8. Programs such as More Health, however, make the opportunity for learning greater.
“For Pinellas, we are fortunate to have community partners that put the icing on the cake for our students, making the programs more exciting,” Johns says.
The nonprofit’s budget is supplemented almost entirely from corporate sponsorships and backing from Tampa General Hospital and All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Executive Director Karen Pesce says.
Now, more than ever, the group intends to visit classrooms for free, even as More Health looks to expand on the state and national level, Pesce says.
Its education efforts will continue to focus on four key areas: oral health, nutrition, vision and the risks of distracted driving. Industry groups, including Pinellas-based Transitions Optical and Oral Health America, will be the primary backers of nationwide initiatives focused on dental care and vision.
Pesce hopes to reach another 2 million schoolchildren in the next decade. Granted, the means of getting to the kids will have to shift; the Tampa-based teachers can’t make it to Boise quite so easily. They will likely use their successful model to sell the curriculum and training to outside groups.
Expansion won’t alter the group’s mission, Pesce says. More Health is still all about getting kids to care about their health and safety, and getting them to take that message home.
“Go home and share it with your mom, dad and whole family. … We want the whole family to be healthy,” she says.
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Cuts in public dental benefits add to health risks for California’s poor
Published: Saturday, Jun. 19, 2010 – 12:00 am | Sacramento Bee
Emma Snuggs’ smile is still a white flash of straight teeth, though it has been nearly two years since she last had money to visit a dentist.
“You have to choose the necessities,” said Snuggs, 26.
On Monday afternoon, though, she watched as her son Michael Hunsaker, 7, had his teeth checked at the Sacramento Native American Health Center on J Street.
Michael is covered by Denti-Cal, the dental arm of the state’s public insurance program, Medi-Cal.
Snuggs, a single mother and a student at Sacramento City College, is on Medi-Cal as well. But last July the state cut dental services for adults in a move that was expected to save $115 million.
Now, Snuggs is one of millions of California adults without dental insurance. Some had their Denti-Cal benefits taken away. Others are among the working poor who receive no dental benefits through their jobs.
They make up a population of Californians whose oral health – and overall health as a result – is at risk of a dangerous decline.
A variety of studies have found a correlation between oral infections and ailments such as heart disease, stroke and diabetes, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In people with depressed immune systems, bacteria from oral infections can spread into the bloodstream.
“Dental disease often progresses slowly, so when people stop going to the dentist, they don’t get in trouble right away,” said Paul Glassman, director of community programs at University of the Pacific’s School of Dentistry.
“We’re sitting on a little bit of a ticking time bomb that’s going to manifest itself some years down the road.”
About 16 million adults in the state don’t have dental insurance, said Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California. They have to buy insurance or pay for services out of pocket.
Many, like Snuggs, don’t see either as a possibility.
Inability to pay for care will lead to more people ignoring cavities and oral infections until they need emergency treatment, Glassman said. It’s a big health risk, and it could also hurt the patient financially.
Treating an abscessed tooth at a dental office costs around $250. An emergency room visit for dental problems could cost thousands of dollars, said a Sacramento County doctor at a county Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday.
The Native American clinic is the only one in Sacramento right now offering full dental services. It charges adults on an income-based sliding scale but turns no one away in case of emergency, said director Britta Guerrero.
Four or five people with dental emergencies usually walk through its doors each day.
Patients often “show up needing three or more teeth pulled, or have one or more abscessed teeth,” Guerrero said.
Ron Brown, a glazer who lives in Rancho Cordova, has never been to the clinic. He wakes up every day with his mouth throbbing from three abscesses – molars that are rotting away – but says he can’t afford to get them fixed.
Denti-Cal still pays for adults with “emergency cases,” but the state defines that as extractions only, said Marty Keale, executive director of the Capitol Community Health Network.
Brown, 31, chooses to live with the pain.
“I don’t want to get them pulled out and lose all my molars,” he said.
He has little help coming on the federal level. Health care reform requires that all people up to age 21 have dental coverage and provides funding for oral health education, but it says nothing about coverage for adults.
The federal legislation could assist indirectly, by providing subsidies for overall health care coverage. That could conceivably free up more money for people to spend on their teeth.
But Richard Ragudo, 33, a Sacramento City College student who also runs a non-profit serving inner city youths, wonders how many low- or moderate-income adults would use this extra money for insurance.
If money weren’t an issue, Ragudo said, he would fix an infected molar, replace a missing tooth, repair his multiple chipped teeth and maybe splurge on a cleaning.
As things are, he has more basic worries.
“Will I be able to pay my phone bill to call my kids that I have every other week? Will I be able to afford materials for classes? It’s some real-life choices I’m having to make.”
For Emma Snuggs, her son’s oral health is a priority. It helps that Michael still has Denti-Cal, although coverage doesn’t always mean care for children, according to a study by Sacramento consulting firm Barbara Aved Associates.
Sacramento County children on Denti-Cal often have trouble just getting to the dentist for appointments – be it from lack of transportation or the fact that many families don’t know the importance of oral health, the study found.
At the same time, many dentists don’t take Denti-Cal patients because the program is not user-friendly and pays 40 percent of normal fees at best, Barbara Aved said.
Those offices that do take it can be overwhelmed by demand. After Snuggs reapplied for Medi-Cal last July, she had trouble getting Michael into the dental clinic where they were first referred.
They found the Native American clinic soon after. Now, Michael gets dental care almost every other week – “catch-up” after a year with no care at all.
For her own teeth, Snuggs uses traditional Native American treatments along with modern home care, and hopes she doesn’t develop any problems. She is making sure that Michael’s mouth is healthy before she starts paying for her own dental visits.
There, she sees no choice.
“My teeth come second to his,” Snuggs said. “My health comes second to his.”
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