Kids Get Care: Integrating Preventive Dental and Medical Care Using a Public Health Case Management Model

Abstract

Kids Get Care is a public health-based program in the Seattle area designed to ensure that low-income children, regardless of insurance status, receive early integrated preventive medical, dental, and developmental health services through attachment to medical and dental homes (the usual sources of medical or dental care). The oral health component of the program focuses on cross-training medical and dental providers, providing partner medical clinics with a case manager, and educating staff in nearby community-based organizations about how to identify incipient dental disease and possible early childhood developmental delays. The program identifies a local, well-respected dentist to champion the delivery of oral health screening within a medical clinic and to provide oral health training to medical clinic staff. The program works with community agencies to educate families on the importance of healthy baby teeth, routine dental care beginning at age one, and general prevention. In its first year, the program trained 355 community staff and 184 primary care providers on how to conduct an oral health assessment. These staff and providers screened more than 5,500 children for oral health problems. One medical clinic more than doubled the number of fluoride varnishes it provided, increasing from 80 to 167 during a nine-month pilot phase. Other outcome studies are in progress.