Faculty Development in General, Pediatric, Public Dentistry and Dental Hygiene

The availability and capacity of the oral health workforce is an essential dimension of improving access to care. This innovative faculty development proposal targets the rural Appalachian and Mississippi Delta Regions of Kentucky, strengthening the community-based dental faculty and practice workforce in these regions. Sustainable dental education networks of regional full-time "Wildcat" faculty (UK clinic based) and Community Based Faculty (practice based, non-UK) who live and practice in these regions will be formed to provide high quality educational experiences for dental students, as well as, increase dental services to underserved populations. To address oral health disparities the College of Dentistry have developed a state-wide translational research and dental outreach initiative, the Kentucky Oral Health Network (KOHN). Over the next decade, the strategic intent is to evolve a statewide contemporary dental learning community to enable lifelong learning by students, faculty and practitioners, and im-prove oral health, oral health literacy and patient care in the Commonwealth. One of the main focuses of the dental learning community is more numerous and diverse patient care experi-ences in the DMD program with rural and other underserved populations in the community and statewide patient care and public health linkages with health care professionals and organizations via electronic health records and communications support as part of the Kentucky Health Information Exchange. This grant proposal addresses these aims of the network. GOAL 1. Design, implement and evaluate a sustainable community based educational infrastructure that increases the dental clinical services and educational workforce capacity of the University of Kentucky College of Dentistry. Objectives: (1) Develop and implement a comprehensive curriculum to prepare community based faculty to be effective clinical teachers utilizing a combination of web-based instruction, face-to-face conferences and on-sight mentoring in clinical settings.(2) Recruit, hire and develop 5 FTE "Wildcat" community based dental faculty to provide clinical experiences and ultimately management of the Community-Based Faculty Fel-lows (CBFF) program from the northeast KY area (Morehead), southeast KY area (Hazard, Pikeville), eastern Mississippi Delta (Madisonville fixed clinics) and western Mississippi Delta (Benton). (3) Recruit, hire and develop 5 FTE "Wildcat" dental hygienists who can serve in both a teaching capacity and service provider in the rural UK clinics. (4) Develop and implement a series of "best practice" educational programs/units for the FTE dentists and hygienists focused on managing community dental clinics and conducting practice-based research. (5) Recruit and develop (utilizing the comprehensive curriculum for clinical teachers) a cadre of highly educated and calibrated Community Based Faculty Fellows (CBFF) whose practices (both private and community health centers/public health departments) can serve as teaching sites for senior dental students, and (6) Evaluate educational outcomes. UK College of Dentistry faculty currently teaching predoctoral clinical education will provide the mentoring and calibration preparation; other UK medical center professionals will be involved in interprofessional and technology activities. GOAL 2: Increase access to care for underserved, underrepresented minority populations in rural Kentucky through educational and service programs provided by a new community dental infrastructure. Objectives: (1) Increase the number of faculty and students providing oral health education and services in resource-challenged rural communities. (2) Es-tablish surveillance and quality assurance strategies to monitor and report on patient population served, satisfaction, and changes in prevalence/incidence disease rates, and (3) Evaluate changes in workforce in targeted rural Kentucky areas. Electronic data management will be established by the IT support staff at UK. The major outcomes will include 5 FTE highly prepared and calibrated UK Wildcat faculty and 5 hygienists and 20 Community Based Faculty Fellows providing educational experiences and services in rural underserved KY; formative and summative evaluation outputs by participants; a model curriculum for developing community based faculty; quality assurance and service data on patient care delivered and follow up; and workforce improvement data. The program will be phased over 5 years with summative outcomes and dissemination in the 5th year.