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The COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately harmed Black, Hispanic, and other people of color, sparking renewed attention on America’s oral health disparities. While some communities face higher hurdles to good oral health than others, promising solutions exist to achieve greater equity. Policy and health care leaders can do more to advance equitable access to services, including in dental care.

Trinity Cleveland, RDH, was volunteering at the Arizona Dental Mission of Mercy (AZMOM), an annual two-day event that provides dental services to underserved populations. It was her ninth time helping at AZMOM.

Early oral health care is essential for all children. So, it’s good news that Medicaid mandates comprehensive dental coverage for enrolled children until they’re 21 years old. But families with low incomes confront a persistent challenge: having coverage doesn’t guarantee access to care. Data show that children enrolled in Medicaid are less likely to receive the early dental care they need. Thankfully, there are effective solutions that dental and medical professionals, oral health advocates, and others can advance to connect more Medicaid-enrolled children to care.

Since 2010, Donna Balaski, DMD, has voiced the importance of periodontal coverage for adults on Medicaid in Connecticut. “By failing to treat periodontal disease,” she says, “it is like allowing an infection in a person’s lower limb to progress to gangrene where the ultimate treatment is amputation.”

Jason Roush, DDS, realized early on in his career the importance of improving the oral health of all West Virginians. He started as a private practice dentist after graduating from the West Virginia University School of Dentistry in 1998, but he quickly started to look beyond the four walls of his office. “I thought I could have a bigger impact working in the state government in the West Virginia Oral Health Program than what I could in the private sector,” Roush says.

In 2009, in the wake of a major national recession, Hawai‘i — like many other states — grappled with the difficult decision on what to cut from its state budget. Unfortunately, non-emergency dental benefits for adults on Medicaid were on the “cut” list, leaving hundreds of thousands of adults in Hawai‘i without access to preventive and restorative dental care. More than a decade later, that reality is about to change.

Throughout 2022, leaders of all kinds, from across the oral health community, brought forth ideas and solutions to help improve oral health in the US. Those voices, each one, are essential to creating a system that is accessible, equitable, and integrated. 

Brush-on therapies have become a popular form of minimally invasive care in recent years. As an alternative to surgically managing caries, silver diamine fluoride (SDF), povidone iodine (PI), and non-staining peptide-guided enamel regeneration P11-4 offer patients and providers options that are often preferable to the “drill-and-fill” approach. Change, in this case, is happening quickly.

This past year was full of positive developments in the oral health system: expanded oral health coverage for millions of Americans, initiatives to advance medical-dental integration, and new codes that will

Advocates from the Maryland Dental Action Coalition joined Maryland Governor Larry Hogan (seated in glasses), Senate President Bill Ferguson (seated, center), and House Speaker Adrienne Jones (seated, far right) for the signing of