A Funder Collaborative To Integrate Oral Health Into Primary Care Sets The Bar

My experience with collaboration among foundations to achieve a particular goal has varied widely in my dozen years at the REACH Healthcare Foundation. While some collaborations have just resulted in stronger personal relationships with funder colleagues, other collaborative endeavors have reminded me of childhood experiences at camp where we would be urged to run through the woods on a “snipe hunt” in search of an elusive, and imaginary, bird, only to come up empty-handed and a little wiser. A recent collaboration in which I was involved, however, set the bar in terms of exceeding expectations and resulting in a lasting contribution to the field of health philanthropy. A Framework Nearly four years ago, a group of health grantmakers with shared interest in improving access to preventive oral health care began meeting to strategize how to engage primary care providers in promoting the relationship of good oral health to overall health, and to gain their support for an efficient and effective delivery framework. The DentaQuest Foundation, REACH Healthcare Foundation, and Washington Dental Service Foundation drew on the expertise of Qualis Health to design the Oral Health Delivery Framework, a conceptual model developed in partnership with a Technical Expert Panel made up of primary care and dental care providers, medical and dental associations, payers and policy makers, a patient and family partnership expert, and oral health and public health educators and advocates. The...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Featured GrantWatch Health Professionals Organization and Delivery Public Health Oral Health Source Type: blogs