Editorial
Addressing Vulnerable Dental Populations
Ethan A. Pansick, DDS, MS, FACD Ethan Pansick is a prosthodontist in private practice and is a member of the Journal of the American College of Dentists Editorial Board.
Vulnerable dental and medical populations can include a wide variety of patients depending upon who is categorizing the patients and what definition of vulnerable they are utilizing. Vulnerable populations are communities that have limited access to healthcare for many reasons including geography, finances, medical status, age, education and historical societal discrimination. Such vulnerability may be temporary or permanent, and status may be improved or exacerbated by social and economic policies at the local, state and federal level. Negative health sequelae of limited access to care among vulnerable populations include disproportionately poor oral and systemic health status and lower utilization rates of preventive services.1-3 As a private practice prosthodontist, my perspectives on identifying and helping treat vulnerable patient populations may indeed be different than those practitioners who treat patients in hospital, educational, institutional or large practice settings. Dentists who treat patients in hospitals, educational settings and other regulated settings of-
Journal of the American College of Dentists
ten have well-established procedures and protocols in place to help identify vulnerable patients from the time of their first visit to the provider. Support networks of other medical, dental, and social service providers are readily available and multiple referrals can be accomplished quickly and easily. Specially trained patient coordinators and social workers
are often integral members of the care team and, as such, can help guide a vulnerable patient through the processes in place to help obtain treatment, improve their overall health, and, in some cases, follow-up with the patients after treatment. While the aforementioned models work quite well at addressing the needs of vulnerable patient
6
