Last week, the New York Times reported on the dire need to improve health care on Native American Tribal Lands. Unfortunately, one of the major components of overall health and the health care system was overlooked as part of the article – oral health and access to dental care.
Today, Native American Indian children and adults are suffering disproportionally because of lack of access to dental care. Untreated dental decay is two to three times higher among Native Americans than in the general population.
For example, at the Pine Ridge Clinic in South Dakota, children ages three and four attending a Head Start program were recently given screening exams by a dentist near the village of Wounded Knee. Of twenty kids who were screened, 18 of them were found to have severe dental problems that could only be treated in an operating room due to the extent of their dental problems. That means the children had severe decay deep into their teeth that was causing pain, multiple infections and made eating difficult. More than half of each of these children’s teeth were severely decayed because of lack of access to dental professionals and services.
The Indian Health Service dental clinic in Pine Ridge is understaffed, making it impossible to provide care to all the children on the reservation suffering from tooth decay. In short, if children are able to get to the clinic, which is 17 miles away, dentists are so overwhelmed by the demand to provide more serious treatment that they are unable to provide preventive care or treat cavities or decay.
While a shortage of dental professionals is a major problem throughout the country, it is worse on tribal lands. The Indian Health Service (IHS) has a 34 percent vacancy rate for clinical dentists; in some areas, the vacancy rate is 50 percent. In fact, there is only one dentist per 4000 Indians, compared to one dentist per 1700 in the general population.
Fortunately, Alaska has found a solution to this critical need for dental professionals to serve Native American Indians and the general population, who lack access to quality, affordable dental care. There, the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC) has added a dental therapist to the dental team to increase access to care.
Dental therapists are home-grown health professionals who serve their own communities. They fill a critical role in the dental partnership by providing complementary services to those dental hygienists and supporting the work of dentists. For nearly 100 years, dental therapists have been providing cleanings, sealants, fillings, and simple extractions to underserved urban and rural populations in countries with advanced dental care systems similar to the U.S., such as Canada, England, and New Zealand.
Before the program was implemented, some residents had access to dentists who only visited once a year. With the support of philanthropic organizations, dental therapists were trained, first in New Zealand and now by the University of Washington’s Medical School, and have returned to provide critical care to Alaskan natives. Now, 11 dental therapists are providing care in nine dental shortage areas to more than 7,000 previously underserved Alaska Natives. By 2012, there will be 32 dental therapists living in and providing culturally competent, high, quality dental care in dental professional shortage areas.
The quality of care offered by the dental therapists is well documented. Research and evidence from other countries where dental therapists have been part of the dental team since the 1920s shows that the preventive and basic dental repair services provided by dental therapists are safe, high quality, acceptable to the public and cost-effective.
Despite the successful use of dental therapists as part of the dental team, the American Dental Association is trying to prevent dental therapists from joining dental teams on tribal lands in the lower 49. Thursday afternoon, ADA President Ron Tankersley testified that Native American Indian people should not receive care from dental therapists.
With 83 million Americans lacking access to dental care, now more than ever, we need to look at ways to improve the system. Dental therapists can benefit everyone, including dentists because they can provide critically important basic treatments to patients and allow dentists to focus on more serious services and surgeries. We need to work together to provide all residents with access to quality, affordable, dental care – the dental therapist model is a proven solution for bringing care to every community.
–David Jordan, Dental Access Project director
Tags: Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, American Dental Association, children's health, dental therapists, U.S. Senate
American Dental Association Being Held Accountable for Greed
Republican Senator Charles Grassley’s (R-IA) call for a financial discloser from the American Dental Association (ADA) along with other medical groups is just a start of holding corporate ADA accountable for the money it wastes and spends as a nonprofit suppressing and pushing out competition. The American Dental Association lobbies federal and state legislators to disregard legislation that would regulate the denturist profession in many states that include Kentucky and Wyoming. The ADA spends money to persecute denturists.
The ADA lobbied for exclusion of language to expand the dental health aide therapists programs to states other than Alaska in the recent U.S. Senate Bill 1790. The American Dental Association, wasted money fighting Alaska and lost; trying to prevent dental health aide therapists from providing dental services to Natives of Alaska living in remote areas. The American Dental Association lobbies to suppress dental hygienists from having independent boards and practices.
The American Dental Associations total lobbying expenditures as of October for 2009 was $2,110,000.00 reported by opensecrets.org. The ADA’s self-serving political agenda is hurting consumers by suppressing qualified competitors that provide oral health services to those with disparities. ADA works against its very own vision and mission statement by suppressing competition that has been trained and educated in providing oral health care services to those that are unable to pay the high prices charged by dentist leaving Americans without needed dental care.
Many people do without needed dental care because of high prices charged by dentist and not being eligible for Medicaid, low income programs and not having dental healthcare insurance. Corporate ADA has the power and money to change the current dental care delivery system for the better if the American public would speak out against the American Dental Associations deceiving and pacifying public relations campaign for a better public image.
Gary W. Vollan L.D.
State Coordinator, Wyoming State Denturist Association
P.O. Box 332, Basin, Wyoming 82410
307-568-2047
http://www.wysda.org
References:
137th APHA Annual Meeting (November 7-11, 2009): Denturists: Alternative healthcare providers for oral health screenings and referrals
http://apha.confex.com/apha/137am/webprogram/Session27637.html
http://grassley.senate.gov/news/Article.cfm?customel_dataPageID_1502=24413
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/health/policy/08grassley.html?scp=2&sq=grassley&st=cse
http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?year=2009&lname=American+Dental+Assn&id=
Great content. Looking for some dental related materials when I stumbled across your site. Bookmarked! thanks for the post. – Shane