People with disabilities and other special needs present unique challenges for oral health professionals in planning and carrying out dental treatment. This article presents a schema for planning dental treatment…
More than 50 million individuals in the United States with developmental disabilities, complex medical problems, significant physical limitations, and a vast array of other conditions considered under the rubric of…
Access to oral health care for persons with special health care needs is quite limited. Psychologic, economic, and physical barriers exist that prevent these patients, who may have complex medical…
Disparities remain among the United States population with regard to who receives dental treatment. This article assesses current programs designed to provide dental insurance coverage. This assessment examines person-level use…
The executive and legislative branches of state government have broad authority that provides the underpinning for the dental health care system. This article describes four principal areas in which policy…
Dental coverage provides a means to obtain oral care, which is an important component of overall health. This article discusses the common forms of dental health plans, the services usually…
Social work programs in dental schools and dental clinics have been operated successfully since the 1940s, and have been documented as contributing to patients’ access to care and to dental…
Teledentistry is an exciting new area of dentistry that fuses electronic health records, telecommunications technology, digital imaging, and the Internet to link health providers in rural or remote communities. For…
Improving access to oral health care requires an understanding of the social, cultural, political, financial, and manpower factors that influence access. Armed with this knowledge, individuals and organizations desiring to…
Oral health care reform is made up of several components, but access to care is central. Health care reform will occur in some fashion at some point, and how it…
Dentists and the dental health care industry have a renewed interest in clinical risk assessment, because they offer the potential to identify a patient’s clinical needs for oral health care…
Despite vast improvements in the oral health status of the United States population over the past 50 years, disparities in oral health status continue, with certain segments of the population…
This article documents the disparities in oral health among children, identifies barriers to access to care for children, describes the use of dental therapists internationally to improve access to care…
The disadvantaged suffer disproportionately from dental problems. These persons are more likely to have untreated oral health problems and associated pain, and also are more likely to forego dental treatment…
The dental workforce refers to the number, distribution, and characteristics of dentists, dental auxiliaries, and other support staff involved in the provision of oral health care. This article reviews the…
Oral health is associated with overall health, and lack of access to dental care has consequences that go far beyond aesthetics. Most oral diseases are preventable and are relatively easy…
The standard ethical arguments that prescribe dentistry’s involvement in improving access to oral health care are based on the ethical principle of social justice. The authors underwrite this principle but…
Traumatic dental and maxillofacial injuries are common occurrences, and affect worldwide approximately 20% to 30% of permanent dentition, often with serious aesthetic, functional, psychological, and economic consequences. With such a…
This article presents current concepts of managing teeth with traumatic pulp exposures. The article includes a description of the traumatology of crown fractures, discussion of treatment considerations, a summary of…
The old Boy Scout’s motto, “Be Prepared,” can be beneficially applied to the management of dental trauma. A large number of dental injuries occur every year, primarily in the 7-…
