Treating Underserved Dental Patients
August 13, 2008 - A new guide from the California HealthCare Foundation outlines the necessary techniques and tools for clinics to increase their payment revenues and expand their capacity to treat low-income and uninsured patients. A companion issue brief focuses on the specific barriers faced by California's Federally Qualified Health Centers in expanding dental services. The authors conducted in-depth interviews at six clinics with low to moderate volumes of dental patients and developed a set of recommendations to help community providers overcome these impediments, improve productivity, and increase capacity.

Reports Released at Capitol Hill Briefing on Dental Health
August 6, 2008 - Foundation's Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured (KCMU) and the Alliance for Health Reform cosponsored a July 25 Capitol Hill briefing to examine oral health in the broader conversation of improving quality and expanding access. Three new reports from KCMU were released at the event:

Access to Affordable Dental Care: Gaps for Low-Income Adults, which finds that both dental coverage and access to care are limited for low-income adults and that even low-income adults with dental coverage are not getting sufficient levels of needed dental care.

Filling an Urgent Need: Improving Children’s Access to Dental Care in Medicaid and SCHIP, a summary of a discussion with oral health experts and their recommendations for state policies related to children’s access to oral health care.

Dental Coverage And Care For Low-Income Children: The Role Of Medicaid And SCHIP, a fact sheet.

2008 Report on Key National Indicators of Child Well-Being Available Online
July 14, 2008 - The newly released America's Children in Brief: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2008 profiles the status of the nation's children and youth, presenting up-to-date federal statistics on a variety of issues in one convenient reference. According to the report, in 2006, only 76% of children ages 2–17 had a dental visit in the past year. Read more about oral health in the report.

2008 Factbook: Juvenile Justice in Rhode Island
April 7, 2008 - Rhode Island KIDS COUNT's annual publication on the well-being of children and families in RI, the 2008 Rhode Island Kids Count Factbook includes the indicator: Access to Dental Care. The Factbook reports on 62 indicators of child well-being across five subjects: Family and Community, Economic Well-Being, Health, Safety, and Education.

New Analysis on Children's Access to Health Insurance and Health Care
August 15, 2007 - An August 2007 report provides a comprehensive state-by-state analysis of children's access to health insurance and health care—including changes in coverage since the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) was introduced.

Fact Sheet Provides an Overview of Role of Medicaid's and SCHIP's in Dental Coverage and Care for Low-Income Children
A fact sheet from the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured provides an overview of dental care access and coverage for low-income children through Medicaid and State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which are major sources of dental coverage for millions of low-income children.