Poster Presenters - Community Based Organization Category

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Q1 Please provide your contact information below.

Name

Title and Organization


Address

Address 2

City/Town

State/Province

ZIP/Postal Code

Email Address

Phone Number

ROSE AMABLE

Clinical Associate Professor. NYU College of Dentistry Pediatric Dental Department

345 E 24TH ST FL 9W

APT 2

TARRYTOWN

NY

10010

rja308@nyu.edu

914–255–7633

Q2 Please describe your company or organizations overall goals and mission.

"Bringing Smiles for District 75" is an innovative, advanced and collaborative special needs school–based dental program partnering with NYC DOH and NYU College of Dentistry which seeks to increase access to comprehensive pediatric dental care services for underserved children through the establishment and operation of portable dental clinic inside NYC District 75 Special Needs schools.

Q3 Please indicate which category your organization falls under.

Community Based Organization,
Other (please describe below: 150 character maximum):
school based model for special needs patients

Q4 Innovation Executive Summary. Please describe the innovation, and how it addresses the social determinants of health. Please identify how the innovation addresses the 6 innovation criteria (i.e. ROI, scalability, feasibility, evidence–based support for innovation, relevance to the Medicaid population and speed to market).

Bringing Smiles for District 75 has created and established the first school–based dental model for children with special needs in NY State. Our program eliminates barriers (underutilization of services, lack of providers knowledge, limited English proficiency, social and cultural barriers, lack of transportation among others) that prevent parents and children with special needs from obtaining proper access to pediatric dental care.

Our Bringing Smiles for District 75 school–based dental program is based on four main components:

  1. Consent– collaborative participation and close communication between parents, teachers, nurses, principals and pediatric dental faculty.
  2. Desensitization – providing dental social stories (both in paper and digital format) as well as, a step by step video about the dental visit that parents, teachers and students can watch multiple times.
  3. Leveraging technology – (Wi–Fi, digital radiographs, electronic health records, cordless slow hand pieces (for children with sound and vibration sensitivities), "mirrors lites" (for children with light sensitivities).
  4. Pediatric dentists (faculty and residents)– who will be providing the desensitization appointments and dental treatment.

Bringing Smiles Program as an innovation:

  1. Potential Return on Investment: Children with signed consents for dental treatment are present 95–98% of the time at the elementary school for dental treatment (except for sickness or scheduled field trip/exams). Therefore, eliminating the possibility of cancellation/ no show appointments.
  2. Scalability: We participate with one district 75 school, however there are 7 other schools with special needs children that we could participate in the future.
  3. Feasibility – To each participating school, we have asked for a spacious room where we could provide dental treatment and also store our portable units, portable chairs and materials. Therefore, our dental set up is conveniently accessible every week.
  4. Evidence–Based support for innovation: Research shows that dental caries, the most prevalent type of dental disease in children, occurs more often in disadvantaged children, but even those in public insurance have great difficulty gaining access to primary dental care services. Our program eliminates the barriers that challenges parents and children the access to pediatric dental care. Barriers such as: difficulty finding a dentist and scheduling appointments, long waiting times, transportation issues, prejudice regarding cultural background and the receipt of Medicaid, lack of permission from work/school, and the lack of insurance coverage.
  5. Relevance to the Medicaid Population: Underutilization of services, as well as the difficulty of finding a provider based on insurance coverage are among the barriers that our school–based program eliminates. As research indicates, fewer than 1 of every 5 children enrolled in Medicaid use preventive services in a given year; worse yet, fewer Medicaid–insured children receive comprehensive dental care beyond the initial preventive visit. Bringing Smiles provides complete preventive and comprehensive dental treatment.
  6. Speed to market: Since our program is school– based, we needed permission from both the DOH and DOE in order to implement our program for each participating school. Our program provides an individualized and personalized care for each patient. We requested parents to fill out a detailed questionnaire with information regarding their prior dental experience and sensitivities. Based on their answers, desensitization appointments were established until patient is comfortable to have dental treatment provided.

In conclusion, Bringing Smiles for District 75 is an innovative model program that has considerable promise for reducing access disparities within the underserved special needs children in NYC public schools.

Q5 Was your innovation implemented? If so, please explain when, the number of people impacted, and the results.

Yes (please specify when and the estimated number of people impacted):

We are in the stages of collaborating with teachers and parents to obtain more information in regard to social stories and information about patients´ sensitivities and previous dental experiences

Q6 Please identify the SDH Domain that your innovation addresses. (Select all that apply.)

Education,

Social and Community Context,

Health and Health Care,

Economic Stability

Q7 I give the Department of Health the right to share the information submitted in this application publicly (for example: on the DOH website). I understand that there is no monetary reward/reimbursement for my submission or for attending the summit should my innovation be selected.

I consent to have my innovation shared