The Maine Oral Health Coalition was convened as the Maine Dental Access Coalition in June 1997 as a collaboration between Maine’s Oral Health Program (OHP) and the Maine Children’s Alliance, a children’s advocacy organization.
Key past work from our coalition has included conferences, producing and serving as a repository of reports relevant to oral health issues in Maine, and awards to Maine’s Oral Health Heroes.
Past conferences
- 2011 Conference – Oral Health for Young Children: Everybody’s Business
- 2013 conferences, webinars, and symposiums
Key historic reports
We highlight here reports that guided our coalition development and the history of oral health improvement efforts in Maine:
- Oral Health in Maine – 2013. An overview of then-current available information on the burden of oral disease in children and adults of Maine.
- Oral Health In Maine: A Background Report – January 2012 Center for Health Workforce Studies, Health Research Inc.
- Promoting Awareness, Preventing Pain: Facts on Early Childhood Caries (ECC) – National Maternal & Child Oral Health Resource
- The Cost of Delay: State Dental Policies Fail One in Five Children – Pew’s February 2010 report on state policies with supplement on Maine’s Report Card
- Governor’s Task Force on Expanding Access to Oral Health Care – 2008
- Maine Oral Health Improvement Plan – 2007 plan produced by our coalition
Oral Health Heroes
History of Committee Work
The Policy Work Group educated legislators and policy makers on oral health issues, cultivated oral health champions in the legislature, and encourages new organizations to join in MOHC work on policy.
The Hands On Team worked on specific priorities within the Oral Health Plan, emphasizing those that had to do with behavioral modification at the clinical/community level including increasing oral health screenings in well child visits, increasing childcare provider capacity to do oral assessment and guidance, and increasing dental practices that see children under three. This committee worked on the Head Start Dental Home Initiative.
Maine Health Workforce Forum – MOHC members served as an oral health subcommittee within the Forum and addressed data collection on Maine’s oral health workforce, responded to opportunities for student loan repayments, connected Maine’s oral health workforce to Department of Labor training opportunities, and supported oral health workforce training grants.