Oral health needs of Wampanoag elders on Martha's Vineyard: A comprehensive assessment.

OBJECTIVES: Evaluate oral health care access and utilisation, while identifying the specific oral health needs of the Native American Elders within the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (WTGH) on Martha's Vineyard Island. BACKGROUND: Elders, particularly the WTGH face notable issues in obtaining oral health care. This study addressed the oral health gaps within the WTGH Elders through a comprehensive community needs assessment. METHODS: Employing a mixed-methods approach, qualitative concept mapping interviews with stakeholders and tribe members, a quantitative survey was conducted, and deidentified billing codes were analysed. RESULTS: Concept mapping revealed limited availability of services, accessibility and transportation, insurance challenges, lack of a centralised database, tribal/national policy and health-related self-sufficiency. Quantitative data indicated that 65% of Elders faced challenges in accessing oral health care, and 48% reported experiencing an oral health issue in the last 12 months. Additionally, 23% did not receive oral health care during this period, with a significant portion having previously utilised services at the Martha's Vineyard Hospital Oral Health Clinic. CONCLUSION: Establishing a formal relationship between the WTGH and an academic institution for creating a portable oral health clinic supervised by faculty and developing a structured referral system is essential. This initiative aims to dismantle barriers to oral health care, improve access, and meet the oral health needs among Elders while offering valuable educational experiences for students regarding diverse patient populations and access-to-care factors.

Practice Transformation Analytics Dashboard for Clinician Engagement.

PURPOSE: Practice transformation in primary care is a movement toward data-driven redesign of care, patient-centered care delivery, and practitioner activation. A critical requirement for achieving practice transformation is availability of tools to engage practices. METHODS: A total of 48 practices with 109 practice sites participate in the Garden Practice Transformation Network in Maryland (GPTN-Maryland) to work together toward practice transformation and readiness for the Quality Payment Program implemented by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Practice-specific data are collected in GPTN-Maryland by practices themselves and by practice transformation coaches, and are provided by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. These data are overwhelming to practices when presented piecemeal or together, a barrier to practices taking action to ensure progress on the transformation spectrum. The GPTN-Maryland team therefore created a practice transformation analytics dashboard as a tool to present data that are actionable in care redesign. RESULTS: When practices reviewed their data provided by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services using the dashboard, they were often seeing, for the first time, cost data on their patients, trends in their key performance indicator data, and their practice transformation phase. Overall, 72% of practices found the dashboard engaging, and 48% found the data as presented to be actionable. CONCLUSIONS: The practice transformation analytics dashboard encourages practices to advance in practice transformation and improvement of patient care delivery. This tool engaged practices in discussions about data, care redesign, and costs of care, and about how to develop sustainable change within their practices. Research is needed to study the impact of the dashboard on costs and quality of care delivery.

Bridging gaps: Transforming dental public health training for modern job market demands.

OBJECTIVES: To create optimal oral and overall community health, dental public health (DPH) specialists must be competent and appropriately skilled to deal with contemporary and emergent public health issues. This study aims to evaluate the current job market demands related to the DPH profession and suggest contemporary skills and qualities that would enable DPH professionals to address emerging issues more effectively in their field. METHODS: A multimethod qualitative study was conducted involving two distinct groups: employers and potential employees. Interviews of stakeholders (employers) representing different job market domains, and a survey was administered to recent DPH residency graduates (employees). Qualitative analysis was applied to the data collected. RESULTS: Employers identified the following skills as crucial for future DPH employees: proficiency in care delivery systems, health informatics, clinical training, leadership, and professional and grant writing skills. Many employers assumed the presence of a clinical component in the residency program. DPH residency graduates emphasized that the most significant barrier to securing positions is the lack of clinical experience within the residency program. CONCLUSIONS: This research highlights skills currently valued by the DPH job market and proposes that DPH specialty training may consider revising its curriculum to include these skills. Implementing such updates would ensure that graduates are well equipped and competitive, thus significantly contributing to the broader objective of attaining optimal oral health and overall well-being of the community.