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Advancing the public health workforce to achieve organizational excellence
Increasing Use of Oral Health Care

Overview

 

 The Healthy People 2020 Leading Health Indicator, “Increase the proportion of children, adolescents, and adults who used the oral health care system in the past year,” can be achieved more effectively and efficiently through collaborative strategies by public health and health care organizations. With funding from the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Public Health Foundation (PHF) led an effort to develop a driver diagram to help public health and health care organizations work together to increase the use of oral health care. A population health driver diagram can be used collaboratively by public health, health care, and other partners to identify the potential primary and secondary drivers that can help to achieve an identified community health objective.

 
Activities of the Oral Health Care Advisory Group
On May 15, 2014, PHF’s Oral Health Care Advisory Group met in Washington, DC. This interdisciplinary team of experts in quality improvement, oral health, epidemiology, and public health practice, helped identify and map primary and secondary drivers that can lead to increased use of oral health care services, and develop the Population Health Driver Diagram to Increase Use of Oral Health Care. PHF is currently seeking sponsors to help test and further refine the driver diagram for potential use in communities throughout the United States.
 
About the Use of Driver Diagrams
PHF has successfully used this approach before, having developed and piloted the Public Health Antibiotic Stewardship Driver Diagram, which outlines primary and secondary drivers of optimal antibiotic use. Among the pilot sites testing the driver diagram, an important accomplishment was greater collaboration between public health and health care, which improved the processes and protocols used by stakeholders to improve the use of antibiotics in the community. PHF looks forward to applying this interdisciplinary framework to improve use of oral health care services.
 
 
The TRAIN Learning Network offers access to these courses about oral health.
 
Increasing Use of Oral Health Care