California Children's Dental Workforce Campaign: A Project to Increase Access to Dental Care for Children

Development of and Effective Deployment of New Workforce Models: 
TCP is promoting the expansion of the dental team through new workforce models to meet the dental access needs of California’s underserved children. Such models utilize additional types of providers who are trained to deliver urgently needed, high-quality preventive and routine restorative dental care in places where underserved children are located. Such models have proven to be successful in more than 50 countries and Alaskan native communities at increasing children’s access to high-quality dental care in an efficient way.

One solution to meeting the dental health care needs of underserved children is expanding the dental workforce. Workforce models that utilize providers with narrowly defined scopes of practice have proven to be a successful strategy in Alaskan native communities and other countries; the use of these new providers has substantially increased children's access to needed high-quality dental care. The California Children's Dental Workforce Campaign aims to increase access to high-quality dental care for large numbers of underserved children in the most cost-effective way by expanding the capacity of the dental team. Learn more about the Campaign.

Download a fact sheet about the dental health needs of California's children.

Download Expanding California's Dental Team to Care for Underserved Children: New Times, New Solutions for a a detailed issue brief that proposes expanding the dental team to meet the current and growing dental care needs of California's children.

Learn about other countries and Alaskan native communities' experience in utilizing allied dental providers to increase access to quality dental care for children.

View a map of states that have implemented or are considering new dental providers.

Visit here for a graphic depicting how workforce solutions fit into the larger context of increasing access to dental care for children and improving children's dental health.

Learn how health care reform spurs the need for an expanded workforce to meet the dental care needs of California's children.

Visit here for a fact sheet developed by Pew Center on the States documenting the safety and quality of care provided by new types of dental providers.

Visit here to see recent legislative efforts to move new dental workforce models.