ASTDD Older Adult Oral Health Resources for Collaboration

Dear Oral Health Partners-

It gives me great pleasure to share the Older Adult Oral Health Resources for Collaboration! This resource is a product from the significant work of an interdisciplinary team, including individuals in state public health programs and academia and clinicians caring for older adults in a variety of settings. We would also like to extend our sincere gratitude to the Gary and Mary West Foundation for supporting the development of this resource tool and to Apple Tree Dental for their partnership in connecting ASTDD with the Gary and Mary West Foundation.

The intent was to develop a resource to answer a need expressed by state oral health programs and other partners during ASTDD Healthy Aging Committee meetings. Committee members expressed a desire to collaborate with groups that focus on older adults to improve the health of this critical population. In 2019 a survey was sent to state oral health programs and state units on aging to determine what, if any, level of collaboration existed between the two groups. Based on the results of the survey, a workgroup was formed with representatives from five state oral health programs and their state unit on aging as well as one representative from the Administration for Community Living. We are grateful to those programs that responded to requests to be on the workgroup and met during the pandemic.

The resources include information on the link between oral health and overall health, oral health and chronic disease, special populations, ventilator and non-ventilator pneumonia, nutrition, financing routine dental care, information for non-dental providers, teledentistry and equity. You will find links to many useful resources. Please keep in mind that we know there are resources that were not included, not because they are not valuable or useful, but due to limitations in the size of the document.

We hope that you will begin to use the resources and respond to our evaluation questions. This information will be helpful as we hope to have updates in the future.

Many thanks go to all involved. You will see acknowledgements inside the document.

Access the Older Adult Oral Health Resources for Collaboration HERE.

Please complete our survey for initial impressions.

Thank you,
Sam
Samuel Zwetchkenbaum, DDS, MPH
Chair, Healthy Aging Committee, ASTDD
Dental Director, Rhode Island