G-2407-21946

The California Pan-Ethnic Health Network (CPEHN) is a statewide organization that brings together and mobilizes communities of color to advocate for public policies that advance health equity and improve health outcomes in communities in California. 

CPEHN has been an engaged and effective CareQuest Institute partner and grantee for several years and CareQuest Institute support to CPEHN has transformed over time. Early funding supported community listening sessions and a landscape assessment to understand barriers BIPOC communities face when accessing oral health care as well as to their oral health promotion. Those activities led to an intentional and successful advocacy for Medi-Cal's restoration of adult benefits in 2018 and defense of those benefits in 2020. CPEHN has also taken on the role as backbone facilitator for the California Oral Health Progress and Equity Network (CA-OPEN) and provided training to community members and leaders on oral health advocacy and community engagement at the county level throughout California.

Moving from engagement to power building, CPEHN has leveraged its CareQuest Institute grants to establish and sustain the Oral Health Equity Core Group (Core Group), a cohort of four, BIPOC-led, community-based organizations that will ultimately serve as a formal avenue for community voice in oral health policy development. With its most recent grant (2023), CPEHN successfully advocated to preserve Medi-Cal Dental benefits, despite state budget challenges and worked with fellow CareQuest Institute grantee, Asian Resources, Inc., to advocate on language justice issues that were driven by community member experiences. To address these barriers, CPEHN is working with the Department of Health Care Services to improve the Medi-Cal Dental Telephone Service Center (TSC). Finally, CPEHN leveraged grant funding to conduct significant engagement with community health workers, which guided the organization's focus on CHW training and equitable integration.

The proposed project from CPEHN has two broad goals:
Preservation of Medi-Cal Dental benefits: The Medi-Cal Dental benefit currently provides essential dental services to low-income communities of color and covers 1 in 3 Californians. When the Medi-Cal Dental benefit has been eliminated in the past during economic downturns, it has led to a loss of access to necessary dental care for all Medi-Cal members.

Increasing diversity in the dental workforce: The dental workforce in California lacks sufficient cultural and linguistic diversity, which hinders the delivery of culturally competent care to diverse populations. CPEHN will work with our longstanding partner, SCOPE (Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education), to advance a dental therapy campaign in California and research the racial and linguistic diversity of the oral health workforce.

In addition to the goals, CPEHN will be entering the midpoint of its five-year strategic plan and the requested funds will support strategic oversight for the dental therapy campaign, ongoing engagement and advocacy with the CORE Equity Group (community leaders who determine oral health policy priorities for the organization), and data collection and analysis to more accurately assess racial and ethnic trends, among several other demographic variables, that exist in publicly available oral health datasets.

This proposed scope of work will maintain California’s progress toward an integrated and equitable oral health system. Funding is recommended in the amount of $175,000, which will be used to support several staff roles, including policy analysts, data scientists, and community advocacy coordinators. Overall, this recommended grant is approximately 3% of the organization's overall operating budget.