Advocates, state officials gather for Oral Health Summit

Shari Tedford, center, a public health nurse educator with the Johnson County Health Department, leads a goal-setting discussion group during the state Oral Health Plan Summit at the Kansas Museum of History in Topeka on Friday. She was assisted by Susanna Honake, right, a lobbyist with Little Government Relations, which represents the advocacy group Oral Health Kansas.-photo by Dave Ranney

By Dave Ranney
KHI News Service

TOPEKA — About 65 health care providers, public health officials and advocates spent the day here Friday assessing and refining state’s long-term plan for improving Kansans’ oral health.

“We’ve accomplished quite a bit in the last three or four years, but there’s always more to do,” said Cathy Taylor-Osborne, director of the Bureau of Oral Health at the state Department of Health and Environment.

The summit attracted a mix of KDHE officials, dentists, hygienists, safety-net clinic managers, and county health department administrators. It was organized by KDHE and the advocacy group Oral Health Kansas.
Taylor-Osborne said the group’s goals would be posted in November on the Oral Health Kansas website.

The website also will include an action plan and regular updates documenting the group’s progress.

“There will be an ongoing evaluation of what, hopefully, we see as the goals and the strategic planning activities for the next three years and of how we’re going to monitor how those goals are being met,” Taylor-Osborne said.

The goals are expected to focus on:

• Promoting the concept of good oral health being essential to overall wellness;

• Advocating for policies that lead to better oral health including: fluoridation, Medicaid-funded dental care for adults, increases in Medicaid reimbursements for children and adequate funding for clinics that care for the uninsured;

• Increasing the number of dentists and hygienists available to the state’s underserved populations.

KDHE Secretary Dr. Robert Moser urged the group to continue “knocking down the silos” that exist between the state’s dental, medical and mental health communities.

“There’s a compartmentalization that’s been going on in health care since the 1940s,” Moser said. “But all of us in health care need to play a role in dealing with these areas even though they may not be our forte, whether it’s behavioral health, oral health or physical health. And we all need to recognize that these issues need to be addressed, and we need to be advocates for getting our patients the care that they need.”

Moser announced that KDHE filed its application for accreditation with the national Public Health Accreditation Board earlier this week.

The application, he said, stresses the department’s commitment to “healthy living,” “healthy communities,” and “access to services.”

Many of the issues cited by Moser and others are not new, said Oral Health Kansas Executive Director Tanya Dorf Brunner.

“It’s not like we haven’t been working on these things,” Brunner said. “There still are some big financial problems because Medicaid doesn’t cover dental for adults, we still have some underserved areas in the state, and we’re still having a hard time meeting the needs of people with disabilities, the elderly and small children. But we’re not done yet, either.”