The District of Columbia Pediatric Oral Health Coalition is a community-driven alliance of multidisciplinary public and private stakeholders convened to address access to oral health for District of Columbia children. The coalition’s overall mission is to improve oral health access and care for all children in the District of Columbia. Coalition priorities include supporting prevention and public health infrastructure, fostering medical and oral health collaboration, and promoting oral health literacy and education.

In support of its mission, the coalition commissioned this report on the oral health of District children receiving Medicaid benefits, which was motivated by a 2009 health and...

Oral health is essential to the general health and well-being of adults and children. Dental caries is a chronic disease that broadly affects children and adolescents, but treatment for dental caries varies greatly by race and income group. A report on oral health released by the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) in 2000 noted that nearly one-third of children aged 2–5 years living in families with incomes of less than $10,000 had untreated dental caries compared with approximately 10% of children living in families with incomes of $35,000 or more (GAO, 2000). Since then, improving the oral health of...

Data were collected from focus groups, from qualitative comments from an online survey, and from an oral health forum conducted with District of Columbia parents, school nurses, primary care pediatricians, oral health clinicians, and representatives from District of Columbia government agencies. The goal of data collection was to better understand challenges faced by District stakeholders in achieving good oral health for children receiving Medicaid benefits, as well as to identify specific recommendations for improving the oral health services and education environment for District children. The focus group, forum, and survey had three objectives:

1. To gather information about experiences with...

In this chapter, we summarize findings related to the DC Oral Health (Dental Provider) Assessment Form. As discussed in Chapter Two, the form is required for school-aged children in the District before they can attend school each year. We first discuss feedback about the original form (see Appendix A), collected principally from participants at the oral health forum and at focus groups. In response to initial feedback, the DC Pediatric Oral Health Coalition revised the original form, presenting two alternative options (see Appendixes B and C). After their development, we held a focus group to query providers (school health nurses...

In this chapter, we present recommendations from stakeholders gathered through focus groups and from the oral health forum and survey input. Participants were queried about recommendations to improve pediatric oral health care in the District with probes to explore types of interventions and potential collaborations that should be considered. This section presents some of these recommendations from parent and provider perspectives.

Focus group participants expressed similar concern about administrative rates and hurdles associated with Medicaid. Many thought that Medicaid reimbursement rates for oral health should be increased.

Focus group participants felt that loan repayment programs and other incentives to encourage...

In conclusion, this report demonstrates a number of issues related to pediatric oral health in the District, particularly for children insured by Medicaid. In the District, children are more likely to report fair or poor oral health than the national average. Wards 1, 7, and 8 have particularly high percentages of children with fair or poor oral health. There is evidence of a disparity in oral health care usage between children insured by Medicaid and all children in the District. Despite this need, oral health providers in the District are clustered such that populations east of the Anacostia River may...