All in for Integration: Oral Health in Interprofessional Education and Training

Abstract

Stark inequities exist in oral health care access with minoritized and marginalized populations facing more barriers to attaining care than the general population does. Considerably more individuals have access to primary health care than to dental services. The high prevalence of access to primary care services relative to dental services suggests a key role for primary care providers to address the oral health needs of patients. A limiting factor is a lack of uniformity of standards and curricula that exist for integrating oral health into primary care training disciplines. Based on the Center for Integration of Primary Care and Oral Health’s (CIPCOH) research over the past 5 y, we have developed broad recommendations for training programs across the primary care spectrum: (1) support champion training programs that incorporate promising and/or best practices, (2) incorporate oral health into interprofessional standards, and (3) establish a curricular and evaluation framework for oral health integration into primary care training.

Knowledge Transfer Statement:

The recommendations from this article can be used by primary care educators and policy makers to better integrate oral health into primary care training programs and ensure a competent primary care workforce.