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Oral Health Care for People With Special Health Care Needs: A Call to Action Ray E. Stewart DMD, MS, and Ben Meisel, MD
GUEST EDITORS Ray E. Stewart, DMD, MS, is a professor and chair of pediatric dentistry at the University of California, San Francisco. He has spent his career providing oral health services to children who are medically compromised or have other special health care needs. He is currently leading an effort to expand the availability of preventive and early interventional services to special needs patients of all ages throughout Northern California. Conflict of Interest Disclosure: None reported.
Ben Meisel, MD, or “Dr. Ben,” is a pediatrician focused on improving the lives of children with special health care needs (SHCN). He is the medical director of California Children’s Services, San Francisco, a professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco and former medical director of the medical camp The Painted Turtle. Dr. Ben is also an award-winning children’s recording artist and the founder of Dr. Ben & Company “Building Play Into Health,” a platform for development of childhoodempowering music, educational gaming and kids’ health entertainment for children with SHCN. Conflict of Interest Disclosure: None reported.
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e are pleased to serve as editors of this curated edition of the Journal of the California Dental Association devoted to the subject of oral health care in the special health care needs (SHCN) population. This is a critical time for special needs dentistry, as there is a growing awareness and sense of urgency among state and local officials to address the persistent inequities and lack of access to basic oral health care services. We are hopeful that once they are made aware of this chronic health justice problem, legislators, community leaders, SHCN advocates and others will embrace the moral and ethical obligation to find a solution in California and beyond — working to provide the dental profession with the resources and incentives necessary to adequately address this serious problem. Furthermore, with inadequate access to preventive and restorative dental care for people with SHCN, who are the most at risk for medical complications and
hospitalization, there is a significant fiscal incentive to reduce the high number of emergency room visits and frequent need for general anesthesia dental services that become necessary as a result of delayed or unmet dental care. It is appropriate to note that to begin to address this particular concern, as this issue goes to print, CDA is asking the California State Legislature for a one-time allocation of $50 million to establish a grant program that will build or expand stand-alone oral health care centers for people with SHCN to receive oral health care. It is our hope that the reader will become more aware of the scope and magnitude of the unmet health care needs in the SHCN population as described in the article “Oral Health Care for Californians With Special Health Care Needs: A Problem in Need of a Solution” and will be introduced to some innovative approaches that are being applied in the search for solutions to this nationwide problem.
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