Grants to States to Support Oral Health Workforce Activities - The Nevada Health Authority will develop and implement six innovative, new-to-Nevada programs to address the oral health workforce needs of the state’s Dental Health Professional Shortage Areas (Dental HPSAs). Nevada faces persistent dental workforce shortages that limit access to quality care for underserved communities, rural residents, children, and adults with special needs. The Nevada Health Authority and a diverse group of state partners will collaborate on this project to strengthen the pipeline, competency, and distribution of the oral health workforce serving these communities. The project, Access. Prevention. Workforce. in Nevada (A.P.W. NV), is a coordinated strategy that improves oral health for Nevada residents through three interconnected pathways: (1) encouraging and supporting state innovation to increase oral health services in Dental HPSAs; (2) developing ways to sustain programs that increase the accessibility and quality of oral health services, with a focus on prevention, in Dental HPSAs; and (3) strategically using evaluation to improve performance, assess impact, and address stakeholder concerns. Proposed innovative programs: (1) an interprofessional dental public health leadership pathway that co-enrolls predoctoral dental students, public-health-endorsed dental hygienists, and Master of Public Health students, with a new mechanism directing graduates into Dental HPSA placements; (2) a statewide interdisciplinary oropharyngeal cancer prevention training model that replaces one-off continuing education with a self-propagating peer-champion network across three regional hubs (Reno, Elko, and Las Vegas); (3) a point-of-care HPV prevention workflow integrated into routine dental visits in Clark County and staffed by trained dental student workers; (4) an in-school oral health STEM pathway delivering a near-peer curriculum inside Nevada high schools to cultivate a diverse future workforce; (5) Nevada’s first coordinated statewide oral health surveillance of adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, used to guide special-needs workforce deployment and provider training; and (6) a public health endorsed dental hygiene pathway to establish school-based sealant programs and public health programs with a focus in rural Nevada. Populations served include residents of Nevada’s Dental HPSAs and underserved communities; dental and public health students and providers who make up the current and future workforce; dental patients in Clark County; high school students in shortage-area communities; and adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Partners include but are not limited to the UNLV School of Dental Medicine, the Nevada Cancer Coalition, the NVax Nevada Immunization Coalition, partner high schools, the ASTDD, Nevada System of Higher Education (NSHE) training sites, and the UNLV School of Public Health, Truckee Meadows Community College and High Sierra Area Health Education Center (AHEC), the Primary Care Office, ARC of Nevada, Down Syndrome Network of Northern Nevada, Renown Hospital/UNR Medical School Pediatrics, Nevada Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Nevada Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry, and the Nevada Governor’s Council on Developmental Disabilities, as well as Nevada’s Aging and Disability Services Division. Over the five years of performance, the project will train and deploy oral health professionals, increase preventive services, expand the pipeline into oral health careers, and generate data to guide workforce planning - building sustainable capacity to improve oral health access and quality across Nevada’s Dental HPSAs.
