The above links will take you to the Center for the Health Professions site.

Center for California Health Workforce Studies

Oral Health

Access to dental care is an issue of increasing concern across the country. Insurance coverage for dental care is much lower than for medical care, and emergency services are rarely available. The lack of services for Medicaid beneficiaries is well documented, as are the disparities oral health status between different racial/ethnic and socio-economic groups. Our Center been researching the supply, distribution and composition of oral health care providers in California for five years, and has been actively working with state and local agencies and initiatives that seek to understand and address the fact that many Californians do not have access to care.

The supply and distribution of the oral health care workforce have, and continue to be, used as the key indicators of a community’s access to care, particularly in dentistry where services are provided primarily in solo dental practices distributed around the state. Our study on the geographic distribution of dental services in California ranks and maps medical services study areas (state-designated rational service areas) in California by ratio of dentists to population to identify communities with greatest need for dental personnel. We found that rural, poor and minority communities tend to have the fewest services available. A new study underway is looking at similar issues in Arizona.

However, understanding the supply and distribution of providers still does not tell the whole story, and can in fact hide some disparities. For example, in a study examining the correlation between Medicaid beneficiaries and dental providers who accept Medicaid, we found communities that had an adequate overall supply of dentist but not enough to provide Medicaid services for that sub-population. Read more…

The composition of the oral health care workforce is therefore also an important indicator of access to care for the increasingly diverse population of California. With no majority race/ethnicity and a multiplicity of languages spoken around the state, culturally competent care is of the utmost importance for promoting and maintaining good oral health. Our research has shown that minority dentists are more likely to work in minority communities. Unfortunately, there are very few minority dentists to serve these communities. New recruitment and retention programs are being developed across the state to increase the diversity of the workforce, and we will be tracking the success and impact of these programs.

To further understand the multitude of issues that impact the oral health care workforce we continuously examine the policies and programs in California and across the nation that seek to remedy problems of access to care, education, regulation, supply and distribution, and composition of the overall workforce. Ongoing studies and articles continue to keep abreast of these issues. Our most recent work was an in-depth analysis of the validity of current Dental Health Professional Shortage Criteria. Upcoming projects will focus on the role of allied oral health care providers, (dental hygienists and assistants) and the every changing oral health care policy environment here in California.

For facts on California’s dentists, click here.

To see a full listing of our dental projects please click here.

To read our dental publications click here.

For further resources click here.