An estimated one in five children goes without dental care each year. States play a key role in ensuring that low-income children have access to basic, preventive dental care. A new report, The Cost of Delay: State Dental Policies Fail One in Five Children, finds that two-thirds of states are doing a poor job. The report was produced by the Pew Center on the States with support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the DentaQuest Foundation.
Pew assessed and graded states and the District of Columbia on eight proven policy solutions that ensure dental health and access to care. A 50-state report card shows that just six states earned an “A” and that 36 states received a “C” or lower. The "report cards" for the states can be downloaded.
Solutions Within States’ Reach
Unlike so many of America’s other health care dilemmas, the challenge of ensuring disadvantaged children’s dental health and access to care is one that can be overcome. Americans are expected to spend $106 billion on dental care in 2010, which includes restorative treatments like fillings and root canals. These expensive treatments could have been mitigated or avoided altogether with earlier, easier and less costly ways of ensuring adequate dental care when they were children.
Policy makers have a variety of solutions that can be achieved at relatively little cost and with a significant return on investment for children and taxpayers. Four approaches stand out:
• School-based sealant programs
• Community water fluoridation, both of which are cost-effective ways to help prevent problems from occurring in the first place
• Medicaid improvements that enable and motivate more dentists to treat low-income kids
• Innovative workforce models that expand the number of qualified dental providers, including medical personnel, hygienists, and new primary care dental professionals, who can provide care when dentists are unavailable.
