Advancing oral health equity through integrating patient, provider, and population-based approaches

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT The goal of this research program is to advance oral health equity through strengthening the scientific basis for innovations in population approaches to improving dental care access, utilization, and quality for all. Mounting evidence suggests that oral health disparities and inequities in the US are largely attributed to population-specific

differences in access to, utilization of, and the quality of oral health care services. These differences arise from system-wide interactions between biological, psychological, social, environmental, economic, policy, and other factors. While there is increasing awareness of these complexities, meaningful scientific progress and translation

is stymied by the preponderance of investigations that maintain a focus on individual, single-level factors in isolation. The proposed research program will incorporate a framework that integrates multi-level perspectives and approaches (e.g., patient, provider, and population) to advance oral health equity, facilitated by the PI’s

expertise as a social epidemiologist and complex systems scientist. Specifically, the proposed research will generate novel data on historically underrepresented populations and employ methodologies to conduct innovative investigations that lie at the intersections of dental care access, utilization, and quality. Findings will

serve to advance the understanding of how and why population oral health disparities and inequities emerge and facilitate more comprehensive and actionable insights.