Section 5: Appendices

Program Design Requirements

The Community Based Dental Partnership Program’s goal is “to increase access to quality oral health care for people with HIV in areas that remain underserved, especially in communities without dental education programs, and to increase the number of dental providers capable of managing the oral health needs of patients with HIV, through collaborative community-based partnerships.”

Dental Partnerships must include the core components listed below. The intent of these requirements is to ensure that services are delivered in a community setting, that dental students are adequately trained, and that the effectiveness and impact of the Dental Partnerships are assessed.

Oral Health Service Delivery

• Collaboration among dental or dental hygiene education programs and community-based oral health providers and partner agencies to deliver oral health care for patients with HIV in community settings, especially in unserved and underserved rural and urban areas.
• Linking patients to HIV services and coordination with other HIV service providers to ensure a continuum of care.

Provider Education and Clinical Training

• Provision of hands-on training experiences for dental and dental hygiene students and dental residents and incorporation of HIV management and community-based service-learning experiences into the dental education curriculum.
• Supervision of students and residents by community-based dentists who may serve as adjunct faculty and provide an understanding of the oral health needs of HIV-positive populations.
• Giving students and residents a public health perspective and social context for health care along with a greater cultural understanding of the health needs of vulnerable populations.

Program Assessment

• Assessment of the partnership’s effectiveness in meeting the oral health needs of HIV-positive individuals in the community.
• Assessment of the partnership’s effectiveness in training students and residents to manage the oral health care for people with HIV.
• Assessment of the program to document the impact on the lives of HIV-positive people and demonstration that these funds are resulting in direct benefit to patients, including the availability of services not previously available or accessible.

The Dental Partnership grantees work collaboratively with community-based dental providers (such as community-based organizations or agencies that currently provide or plan to provide oral health services, or private practice dental providers) to address the unmet oral health needs of vulnerable populations with HIV. The documentation of unmet HIV oral health needs or underserved HIV positive populations is based upon data submitted within the grantee’s application that describes need as presented by Planning Council Needs Assessments, local and CDC epidemiologic data, availability of current HIV health care including oral health services, and description of proposed population and community.