Friday, April 4, 2025
4/4/2025
Statewide Strategies to Advance Oral Health in Wisconsin - The Wisconsin Department of Health Services’ (DHS) Oral Health Program (OHP) and its network of partners will work to promote oral health equity throughout Wisconsin by addressing disparities within populations of focus. This will be accomplished through several equity driven strategies and activities that are conducive to increasing access to evidence-based preventive dental services (EBPDS) in underserved populations, increasing access to optimally fluoridated water, expanding the use of secondary data analysis to inform medical-dental integration and EBPDS efforts, and increasing awareness and adherence to CDC’s dental infection prevention and control (IPC) recommendations. The OHP will engage partners focused on health equity to develop an implementation plan for EBPDS and use data to focus school-based sealant program efforts on high needs schools. Program strategies promoting increased coverage of optimally fluoridated water will consist of strategically building partnerships with water operators, administering fluoridation equipment grants, and providing water operator education and trainings. Public health surveillance serves as the foundation of evidence-based public health programs and the OHP will invest into surveillance system enhancements to ensure MDI and EBPDS implementation efforts are data-informed. The OHP will work with the Division of Medicaid Services and Wisconsin Collaborative Healthcare Quality to improve surveillance efforts that allow for small areas estimates that assess access to EBPDS, and the oral health status and utilization of dental services among those living with diabetes. These partnerships will be key in the identification of disparities and provide a basis for improving access to care among those at increased risk of experiencing oral disease. Lastly, to improve dental IPC, the OHP will collaborate with relevant partners, including the Wisconsin Healthcare – Associated Infections Prevention program and the Wisconsin Primary Health Care Association to improve IPC practices within settings that serve populations with large health disparities. These settings include community health centers, safety net dental access clinics, and school-based sealant programs. The OHP will ensure that data are made available to all partners through a multifaceted data dissemination plan, which includes routine updates to data dashboards, infographics, data briefs, presentations, and e-newsletters. Evaluation activities will be carried out on a continuous basis for the purposes of monitoring progress toward performance measures and long-term outcomes that are consistent with the CDC’s logic model. This comprehensive approach will allow the OHP to maximize the funding resources to achieve the following outcomes: • By August 31, 2027, the population receiving optimally fluoridated water from small community water systems (i.e., serving 10,000 or fewer people) will increase from 33% to 48% by focusing on communities most socially vulnerable to the impacts of non-optimally fluoridated water. • By August 31, 2027, 100% of CWF data will be collected and submitted to the WFRS system, including from small community water systems. • By August 31, 2027, the OHP will disseminate at least 6 data products that assess the relationship between oral health and overall health among adults living with Type 2 diabetes, as well as their use of and access to medical and dental care. • By August 31, 2027, the OHP will increase the proportion of eligible schools served by SAS from 66% to 71%. • By August 31, 2027, the OHP will increase the proportion of eligible students served by SAS from 25% to 30%. • By August 31, 2027, increase the number of OHP staff and partners taking the CDC Foundations: Building the Safest Dental Visit training from 0 to 150. • By August 31, 2027, the OHP will disseminate IPC trainings and resources to at least 50 EBPDS and dental programs serving communities with oral health disparities.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).