Maureen Cooney, MPH: No financial relationships to disclose
Description: The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has been working to address the oral health of children and pregnant women. The Protect Tiny Teeth (PTT) toolkit (www.aap.org/tinyteeth) was created to raise awareness of the importance of oral health for pregnant women, children, and their families. The toolkit includes resources to help health care professionals implement preventive oral health services in medical settings. This project is a continuation of ongoing medical dental integration work. The project measured pediatric practice implementation of preventive oral health services and evaluated utilization of toolkit resources by participating pediatric practices. Eight pediatric sites were selected in January 2022 and tasked with integrating oral health into their pediatric workflow using resources from the PTT toolkit. A kickoff call taught participants the Model for Improvement as a framework for their quality improvement efforts. Three learning collaborative sessions allowed participants to share challenges and successes. Patient chart data was collected monthly from January 2022 to June 2022. At the conclusion of the project, qualitative interviews were conducted to collect oral health integration best practices. At project baseline, 66% of pediatric patients received any oral health education, referral, services, and/or screening, increasing to 93% at the final data cycle. Six of eight evaluated measures increased by more than 20% from the project baseline. Although this quality improvement project was conducted over a limited time frame of seven months, practices were able to implement preventive oral health services in pediatric primary care settings.
Source of Funding:: Source of Funding: This project was supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by American Academy of Pediatrics, CDC/HHS, or the U.S. Government.
