G-2104-16907

The Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers (Mass League) is the community health center association of Massachusetts that promotes population health equity for all through leadership and programs supporting community health centers and members in achieving their goals of accessible, quality, comprehensive, and community responsive health care. Mass League has been a long-time partner of the CareQuest Institute (formerly the DentaQuest Partnership) and engaged in the Safety Net Solutions program, the National Oral Health Innovation and Integration Network, our grantmaking RFPs in 2020, and most recently received a 2021 grant focused on the use of telehealth and teledentistry in health center dental practices.
This proposal, through the Emergent and Relief fund, focuses on improving the COVID-19 vaccination roll-out in Massachusetts by offering dental departments within Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) the opportunity to participate in a vaccine initiative to increase the vaccination rates among historically underserved populations. The vaccine initiative will involve engaging eight Boston-area FQHCs with dental departments in Dorchester and Roxbury who serve patients and communities who are most at risk for COVID-19. The activities involved in this initiative include: adding dentists as vaccine providers at vaccination clinics, deploying dental assistants and hygienists to assess patients for oral health and social determinants of health (SDOH) needs during the post-vaccination observation period, connecting patients to care in the dental department if necessary, providing a toolkit to educate medical teams on engaging with dental departments and oral health care for patients, and creating protocols and guidelines to incorporate ongoing vaccination administering into dental visits. Mass League has also partnered with the MA Department of Public Health and Boston Public Health Commission in their COVID-19 response and has worked collaboratively with local community and faith-based organizations in an effort to center community voice in the project.
The budget for this proposal is $250,000, with the majority going toward sub-grants to 8 community health centers at $27,000 each. The remaining budget areas include staff time and overhead costs.