Grant will help improve oral health for Florida’s children

Early exposure to oral health care provides a crucial foundation for long-term overall health, yet many children in Florida don’t have equal access. With the help of a $200,000 grant from the Health Foundation of South Florida, Frank Catalanotto, D.M.D., and Jill Boylston Herndon, Ph.D., of the University of Florida’s colleges of Dentistry and Medicine, hope to bring care to thousands of underserved children in Dade, Broward and Monroe counties.

A disproportionate number of children living in low-income households develop a serious dental condition known as early childhood caries, or ECC. ECC is characterized by one or more decayed, missing or filled teeth in preschool children. Without early intervention, EEC leads to dental health problems that last a lifetime and can have serious medical repercussions for the patient.

About 700 pediatricians and family practice physicians in Dade, Broward and Monroe counties have been targeted for this educational program. Catalanotto says the grant grew from a similar program funded through the Health Resources and Services Administration that provides group instruction relating to oral health training for Florida physicians. Both the Florida Pediatric Society and the Florida Academy of Family Physicians have cooperated in implementing the training program to their members.

“We’ll address the problem by training pediatricians and family physicians who accept Medicaid to provide dental screenings, preventive treatments and education to their young patients, creating a larger pool of service options for these children and their families,” said Catalanotto, a professor in the UF College of Dentistry’s department of community dentistry.

Lack of access to dental health care is a significant problem for many of the state’s underserved children. A review of Medicaid claims data indicates that only 10 percent of Florida’s dentists accept Medicaid and only a fraction of those are willing to treat children younger than 5 years of age.

Herndon, a research associate professor in the department of eidemiology and health policy research and Institute for Child Health Policy, will assist in the evaluation of the program.

The Health Foundation of Florida is a not-for-profit grantmaking foundation dedicated to expanding access to affordable, quality health care and providing funding that directly benefits the health and well-being of underserved individuals in Broward, Miami-Dade and Monroe counties. Since its inception in 1993, the foundation has awarded more than $75 million in grants and direct program support.

The UF College of Dentistry is the only publicly funded dental school in Florida and is a national leader in dental education, research and service. The college is widely recognized for its oral health research enterprise, emphasizing infectious diseases in dentistry, bone biology, pain and neurosciences, and translational research to improve clinical and dental care.