Department of Health receives $400K Grants to States to Support Oral Health Workforce Activities grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration

Grants to states to support oral health workforce activities - Arkansas faces persistent oral health workforce shortages that severely limit access to preventive and restorative care, particularly in rural communities designated as dental health professional shortage areas (dental hpsas). Over 560,000 residents live in shortage areas, and the state requires more than 100 additional dental providers to meet baseline need. An aging workforce—nearly half of Arkansas dentists are over age 50—combined with practice closures and geographic maldistribution further reduces local capacity. These shortages intersect with transportation barriers, financial constraints, and limited care navigation, leaving many arkansans without routine dental services despite coverage. Significant disparities persist for older adults, black arkansans, and individuals served by strained safety-net systems such as federally qualified health centers (fqhcs). The Arkansas Department Of Health (adh) office of oral health (ooh) proposes the Arkansas oral health workforce innovation network (aohwin), a statewide system designed to strengthen recruitment, preparation, deployment, and support of oral health professionals serving dental hpsas. Leveraging Arkansas’s first dental school—lyon college school of dental medicine (lcsdm)—modernized practice laws, statewide surveillance, and long-standing public health partnerships, aohwin integrates dental education, community-based training, practice transformation, and interprofessional outreach to expand access and address structural workforce gaps. Aohwin includes three coordinated strategies. First, community-based clinical education will be expanded through lcsdm, guided by a new director of community-based education who will oversee affiliate site recruitment, preceptor development, rotation logistics, and evaluation. Clinical training will be prioritized in dental hpsas, fqhcs, mobile dental programs, and aging-focused sites, supported by a statewide Arkansas community preceptor network. Second, the practice transformation collaborative—developed with community health centers of Arkansas (chca)—will strengthen fqhc dental sustainability through workflow redesign, expanded preventive services, medical-dental integration, quality improvement, and utilization of existing state policies. Participating centers will complete baseline and follow-up operational assessments to document gains in efficiency, access, and financial stability. Third, in partnership with the Arkansas minority health commission (amhc), aohwin will integrate oral health services into statewide mobile outreach, providing students with interprofessional training while expanding education, screening, risk assessment, navigation, and teledentistry-enabled consultations in all 75 counties. Aohwin employs a comprehensive performance management and evaluation framework—with support from adh’s performance and evaluation services office—to monitor implementation fidelity, workforce capacity development, organizational transformation, and improvements in access to care. Evaluation activities will track short-term training outputs, intermediate organizational changes, and longer-term indicators such as graduate distribution, dental hpsa workforce trends, and sustained community partnerships. Designed for long-term sustainability, aohwin builds durable statewide infrastructure rather than temporary programs. Community-based rotations will become part of lcsdm’s standard curriculum; practice transformation will create lasting fqhc capacity; and amhc outreach will permanently embed oral health services into trusted community channels. Through coordinated investment, aohwin will strengthen Arkansas’s oral health workforce pipeline, expand access to preventive and clinical services, and improve oral health outcomes for underserved populations across the state.