WORCESTER MEDICINE
Oral Health
Oral Health Across Worcester’s Communities Continued conclusion
With respect to Worcester’s Black and Latinx communities, its homeless population, people with disabilities, veterans, and community members with MassHealth, it is apparent that, despite all being integral parts of our community, they do not have similar oral health outcomes to our white privately insured citizens. We need better integration of medical and dental care, increased access to care, and a diverse workforce to achieve oral and overall health equity for everyone in our Worcester community. + works cited
Como DH, Stein Duker LI, Polido JC, Cermak SA. The Persistence of Oral Health Disparities for African American Children: A Scoping Review. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2019;16(5):710. Eke, P. I., Thornton-Evans, G. O., Wei, L., Borgnakke, W. S., Dye, B. A., & Genco, R. J. (2018). Periodontitis in US Adults. The Journal of the American Dental Association, 149(7). Freitas, D. J., Kaplan, L. M., Tieu, L., Ponath, C., Guzman, D., & Kushel, M. (2018). Oral health and access to dental care among older homeless adults: Results from the HOPE HOME study. Journal of Public Health Dentistry, 79(1), 3-9. All authors are UMMS class of 2023 who recently did their UMMS Population Health Clerkship on the Topic of Oral Health in Worcester. Morgan Groover morgan.groover@umassmed.edu Connor Hickey connor.hickey@umassmed.edu Ashwin Panda ashwin.panda@umassmed.edu Jay Patel jay.patel@umassmed.edu Aditya Vangala aditya.vangala@umassmed.edu Michael Wang michael.wang@umassmed.edu
Oral Health in Medical Education: A Student’s Perspective Olivia Nuelle
M
a n y pa t i e n t s d o n o t h av e d e n t a l
insurance, a dental home, or access to dental care. And yet, oral health is important. It is linked to systemic health and can exacerbate chronic diseases, such as diabetes. Many oral health conditions are preventable and treatable. Dental caries, the most common chronic childhood disease, are preventable with proper oral hygiene and dental care. However, many patients are unable to see a dentist regularly for a variety of reasons, making it important that physicians are trained in the basics of oral health in order to properly serve their patients’ needs and successfully collaborate with dental providers. Many medical schools do not have robust oral health curriculums. Yet, the Institute of Medicine and other national organizations promote the important role that medical providers play with regards to a patient’s oral health care. Through the hard work of oral health champions working at medical institutions, there has been a push to better teach oral health and weave it throughout curriculum. University of Massachusetts and many other medical schools have put a renewed emphasis on teaching preventative care and social determinants of health. The mouth and oral cavity are an important window into the overall health of a patient and an integral component to health maintenance. Adding oral health topics into medical school curriculum ensures that students are taught about the importance of oral health care and its impact on patients’ overall health, and further integrates social determinants of health and preventative care into clinical medicine. During the summer between my first and second year of medical school, I worked with Dr. Hugh Silk to catalog areas where oral health is taught in the curriculum at University of Massachusetts and identify areas of the curriculum to further integrate oral health information. The goal was to make sure that critical oral health topics like childhood caries, oral manifestations of common infections and diseases,
JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2021
15
