Leadership and Legacy: Oral Health Milestones in Maternal and Child Health Leadership and Legacy OHRC

2024

  • Consortium for Oral Health established
Consortium for Oral Health logo

Background

The Consortium for Oral Health (COH), led by the National Maternal and Child Oral Health Resource Center working in collaboration with the Association of State and Territorial Dental Directors promotes evidence-based/-informed information and resources to increase access to and use of oral health care to improve oral health for the maternal and child health (MCH) population. The consortium is funded by a 4-year cooperative agreement from the Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB), Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA).

COH provides services to federal agencies, national organizations, state Title V (MCH) and oral health programs, community-based programs, and professionals working in or with state MCH and oral health programs. To accelerate the adoption and implementation of integrated preventive oral health care strategies that aim to advance oral health, COH translates evidence to practice through resource development and dissemination. COH also supports two learning collaboratives:

Impact

Establishing COH extended MCHB’s commitment to funding an oral health resource center to provide technical assistance with resource development and dissemination. Organizations at the federal, national, state, and local levels depend on the professional services provided and access to the digital library, which includes an extensive collection of resources (e.g., conference proceedings, curricula, policies, reports, standards) developed by government agencies, national and state organizations, community programs, and MCHB-funded projects. Such a resource center was deemed necessary by a 1995 comprehensive needs assessment, and its utility as a partner to those promoting oral health care for the MCH population and their families has been documented since its founding in 1996.

Sources

National Maternal and Child Oral Health Resource Center. 2025. Building State Capacity for Integration [webpage].

National Maternal and Child Oral Health Resource Center. 2025. Consortium for Oral Health [webpage].

National Maternal and Child Oral Health Resource Center. 2025. Maternal and Child Health—Improving Oral Health Integration Projects [webpage].

 


  • Maternal and Child Health–Improving Oral Health Integration Projects established
state map

Background

Maternal and Child Health–Improving Oral Health Integration (MCH–IOHI) projects are demonstration projects funded by the Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB), Health Resources and Services Administration. They aim to advance the integration of preventive oral health care (POHC) into primary care to make POHC more accessible to pregnant women, infants, children, and adolescents, including those with special health care needs, who are at risk for poor oral health.

The projects are implementing a two-tier, state-level and local-level improvement approach that addresses (1) policy and practice; (2) education and outreach; and (3) data, analysis, and evaluation. The state-level approach

  • Informs state policy and practice decisions that promote integrated POHC (e.g., decisions about Medicaid reimbursement for oral health care, decisions about health professions’ state practice acts).
  • Increases oral health literacy in selected organizations across the state using an organizational health-literacy approach.
  • Enhances the state’s oral-health-surveillance activities (e.g., data collection, trends analysis).

These activities, in turn, support the local-level approach to establish, implement, and validate evidence-based models of integrated POHC in communities underserved by oral health care.

MCH–IOHI projects include:

Project team members participate in a learning collaborative (LC) to learn from their peers working on other projects and share insights, experiences, and expertise. The LC provides a forum for members to share their successes, lessons learned, and challenges related to their project’s approaches.

Impact

These eight projects are improving their activities in an all-teach, all-learn environment of sharing experience and expertise. Together as an LC and as separate projects, they aim to

  • Enhance policy and/or scope of practice aimed to increase access and use of integrated preventive oral health care
  • Increase oral health awareness among the health organizations across the state targeted for organizational oral-health-literacy training and outreach.
  • Implement state-level oral health surveillance enhancements aimed to improve trend analysis.
  • Implement an evidence-based model of care aimed to integrate preventive oral health care and primary care services, to include primary-care-clinic workflow modifications, provider training, and dental-referral tracking.

The MCH–IOHI model was built on lessons learned from previous MCHB-funded projects, and MCH–IOHI projects use MCHB-funded tools. These include the Capacity Inventory for Integrating Oral Health Care into Primary Care tool, tailored to population groups (i.e., pregnant women, children and adolescents), and an environmental scan, which collects information about factors that could impact the integration of oral health care into primary care. The projects extend MCHB’s investment in prioritizing oral health care for pregnant women, children, and adolescents.

Sources

Health Resources and Services Administration, Maternal and Child Health Bureau. 2024. Maternal and Child Health – Improving Oral Health Integration Demonstration Projects (MCH-IOHI Projects) Funding Opportunity Number: HRSA-24-039. Rockville, MD: Health Resources and Services Administration, Maternal and Child Health Bureau.

National Maternal and Child Oral Health Resource Center. 2025. Maternal and Child Health–Improving Oral Health Integration Projects [webpage].

 


  • Title V Maternal and Child Services Block Grant guidance updates
cartoon of a family with a child

Background

In 2024, the Maternal and Child Health Bureau, Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) updated the Title V Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Services Block Grant guidance to enhance the program’s effectiveness and accountability. These updates were informed by consultations with national MCH leaders, state Title V agency staff, and other stakeholders.

Key reasons for the updates include:
  • Streamlining reporting requirements: The Title V MCH Services Block Grant application narrative requirements were adjusted to streamline reporting in the four interim years following the first year in which 5-year needs-assessment findings were reported. This change provides states with flexibility to update sections as needed, reducing administrative burden and duplication while maintaining accountability.
  • Advancing public health systems: By refining the reporting vision and structure, HRSA seeks to enable states to articulate comprehensive descriptions of their Title V leadership efforts and activities in advancing public health systems that serve the MCH population.
  • Identifying two universal national performance measures: Two national performance measures (NPMs) were identified as universal NPMs that every state is required to address and report in their Title V MCH Services Block grant application. The universal NPMs serve to accelerate progress on priority areas with a focus on access to and quality of primary and preventive care. The two universal NPMs are postpartum visit and medical home.

These changes reflect HRSA’s commitment to continuous improvement of MCH health services, ensuring that programs are responsive to current public health needs and priorities.

Impact

The update to the Title V Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Services Block Grant guidance reinforced the significance of oral health by retaining an NPM on preventive dental visit.

The NPM on preventive dental visit has two parts: (1) increasing the percentage of women who had a preventive dental visit during pregnancy and (2) increasing the percentage of children and adolescents ages 1 through 17 who receive at least one preventive dental visit annually. States are not required to choose both parts of the NPM on preventive dental visit. A state can choose a preventive dental visit during pregnancy without choosing a preventive dental visit for children and adolescents, or vice versa. The update reinforces the importance of this measure, encouraging states to prioritize oral health in their MCH programs.

Reaffirmation of the NPM on preventive dental visits underscores the need to monitor and improve access to preventive oral health care. By keeping this measure, HRSA emphasized the importance of oral health as a component of overall health for pregnant women, children, and adolescents. This decision supports efforts to enhance preventive oral health care access, integrate oral health into broader health strategies, and use data-driven approaches to improve outcomes for pregnant women, children, and adolescents nationwide.

Sources

Health Resources and Services Administration. 2023. Title V Maternal and Child Health Services Block Grant to States Program: Guidance and Forms for the Title V Application/Annual Report, OMB No 0915-0172 Revision [webpage].

Watson K, Le L, Burns B, DeFrancis Sun B, Mayer R, Richards J. 2024. Preventive Dental Visit: What Works Evidence Accelerator. Summarizing Effective Strategies for MCH. Washington, DC: Strengthen the Evidence for MCH Programs. Washington, DC: National Center for Education in Maternal and Child Health, Georgetown University.

 

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