Community Project Funding/Congressionally Directed Spending - Non-Construction - Applicant: Texas A&M College of Dentistry Address: 3302 Gaston Avenue Dallas, Texas 75246 Project Director: Dan Burch, DDS Contact Numbers: 214.828.8375 (phone); 214.874.4562 (fax) Email Address: dburch@tamu.edu Dentistry.tamu.edu Funds requested: $940,000 for 12 months The Texas A&M School of Dentistry requests FY 22 Community Project Funding in the amount of $940,000 to create the “Texas District 30 Oral Health Initiative” (TX-30). The TX-30 Initiative will provide greater access to oral health care for Congressional District 30 and all Texans. This funding will allow the School to increase capacity by hiring additional faculty and staff in four external clinics, addressing a backlog of emergent cases, and increasing dental and dental hygiene student delivery of preventive and comprehensive dental care. In the 12-month project period, TX-30 will deliver oral health care to an additional 4,400–4,700 patients in TX-30. The TX-30 Oral Health Initiative has three goals: 1) Increase access to oral health care for underserved residents of TX-30. 2) Provide additional clinical and didactic exposure to a wider range of oral health conditions and patient population for student dentists, dental hygiene students, and postgraduate residents and fellows. 3) Positively influence the likelihood of trainees providing care to underserved communities beyond the dental school, by enhancing their dental education and better preparing them to practice after graduation. There is a tremendous unmet need for enhanced oral health training and access to care. For all populations, oral health is an essential part of staying healthy. However, the CDC reports more than one in four (26%) adults in the United States have untreated tooth decay. Poor oral health has serious consequences, including painful, disabling, and costly oral diseases and increased overall health issues related to conditions beyond the mouth, such as diabetes and heart disease. Dental pain associated with preventable and/or manageable oral health conditions can lead to poor job performance among adults and absenteeism among school-age children and youth. According to the CDC, over 34 million school hours and more than $45 billion in productivity are lost each year due to dental emergencies. Millions of Americans are living with one or more oral diseases. This funding would help to prevent and treat those diseases in TX-30, saving taxpayers long-term costs of healthcare. This project will serve thousands of TX-30 constituents by providing oral health care to those unable to access it otherwise. For TX-30 residents, the project will deliver primary care dental services at two children's hospitals, one community health center, and one Medicaid/Medicare-based private practice. This targeted project will reach at least 4700 individual patients across four clinics within the district. For TAMSOD trainees, the project will systematically train 216 dental students, 36 dental hygiene students, 26 residents, and 4 fellows in general, pediatric, geriatric, and special care dentistry. This project will strengthen public health dentistry training in assessing and addressing population needs, and it will produce trained primary care dentists equipped to lead interprofessional, patient-centered care teams in a range of clinical and community settings. Overall, TX-30’s community-based experiential training program responds to the unmet primary care needs of residents of Congressional District 30 and dental trainees alike. TAMSOD is well positioned to improve primary care dentistry education and service delivery in TX-30.
