32 - The Development of a Statewide Health Workforce Partnership: The Texas Recruits and Retains Program

Established since 2018, the Texas Recruits and Retains (TRR) Program is a HRSA funded, innovative partnership between The Texas A & M University College of Dentistry (TAMU), The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTSD), UTHealth San Antonio School of Dentistry (UTHSA), and the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS).

The geographical distribution of the dental schools throughout Texas allowed the program to recruit, teach and train a diverse population. TRR provides dental and dental hygiene students, residents, and recent oral health professional graduates with innovative career development, mentoring, and inter professional experiences in dental public health-focused topics, including social determinants of health, applied to vulnerable and underserved populations. This session describes this unique opportunity that allowed the three schools to coordinate, cooperate, and communicate the same messages to the grant participants, taking into account the culture and existing infrastructure at each dental institution. The collaborative approach and open communication between the three dental schools and DSHS were essential to ensure the modifications and new and revised activities were readily implemented, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Trainee research products, including posters, abstracts, and seminars, were completed and presented at webinars and local and national virtual meetings. We will show the results of the evaluation methodologies developed to evaluate trainee experiences and the Rapid Cycle Quality Improvement methods to make rapid changes in our programmatic grant activities. A well-developed team with effective communication and complementary backgrounds can address the work together and exchange experiences, to tackle Texas's oral health workforce gap.