New Philadelphia Task Force Looks to Improve Dental Care for Low-Income Children

A new coalition of community, education, government and health leaders in the Philadelphia area is looking at ways to assist low-income children who have difficultly obtaining adequate dental care -- a "growing problem" throughout the country -- the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. The Philadelphia Dental Task Force will hold its first meeting in May, and according to Ivan Lugo, head of community affairs at Temple University School of Dentistry and dental director of the city's Department of Health, it will "first assess the availability of care for children and what [can] be done to improve it." According to Lugo, low-income neighborhoods often lack access to dental care because Medicaid reimbursement rates are too low to entice dentists, who often graduate from dental school with large debts, to work in poorer communities. Another problem is that the Philadelphia School District last year ended a program in which 17 dental hygienists performed dental screening and referral services for "thousands of students." And while many poor families look to community dental clinics for care, the number of visits to these sites have declined roughly 30% in the past three years. While the reasons for the drop are unclear, Lugo said that the public lacks education about the "need for routine dental checkups," and that many poor families do not emphasize dental care "either because they do not see the need or because they do not have money to spare."

A Growing National Problem
The first-ever Surgeon General's report on oral health, released last May, found that 25% of poor children have not visited a dentist by the time they enter kindergarten. Poor children are twice as likely as their peers from higher-income families to have cavities, according to the report. In addition, the report said that 108 million American adults and children lack dental insurance -- about 2.5 times the number lacking health insurance. Without insurance to cover dental costs, many people simply forgo dental checkups until they have an emergency situation, the Inquirer reports. And having Medicaid coverage is "no guarantee of good care," according to one yearlong analysis, which found that only "one in five Medicaid-covered children have received a dental checkup."

New Initiatives
To fill the gap, many local communities are launching initiatives for children lacking access to dental care. In the Philadelphia area, Kids Smiles, a not-for-profit program in the city's Eastwick neighborhood, offers dental services to children enrolled in Medicaid or the state's CHIP program or uninsured children whose parents meet certain income limits. The program charges patients a $20 fee. And the suburban-based Phoenixville Area Dental Network and the Bucks County Dental Program both "link families that have no insurance and meet certain income criteria with dentists who have signed onto the network" (FitzGerald, Philadelphia Inquirer, 3/26).