Maine Voices: The time is now to rebuild Maine’s dental health care program

You may possibly not consider considerably about oral wellness further than your daily brushing and flossing and 2 times-for each-yr cleanings. But for several Maine people, particularly individuals who have no dental protection, there are couple solutions for accessing regular schedule preventive dental care. Number of oral wellbeing treatment supplier places of work are accepting new MaineCare clients, and extensive wait times for acute treatment can change a sore tooth into a health crisis.

L.D. 1501 would extend eligibility for the College Oral Overall health Program to all universities in Maine. The plan at the moment serves only a third of the elementary colleges in the state. Dreamstime/TNS

This is not a new dilemma, but the pandemic has produced a undesirable situation worse. In 2020, only 40 % of kids with MaineCare had at the very least just one preventive assistance, these as a cleansing or a sealant. This is a precipitous fall from the year right before the pandemic, when only 57 % of little ones with MaineCare and 69 p.c of small children with industrial insurance plan experienced at least a person preventive declare. This drop in preventative care has effects, as pediatricians are observing young children with sizeable and preventable dental disease.

This alarming craze is not just about tooth. Lousy oral wellbeing is correlated with poor university attendance and functionality. Untreated tooth decay also causes bacterial infections and discomfort that can make participation in day by day pursuits like consuming, playing and mastering hard.

The predicament has not often been so grim. Maine’s dental health and fitness method at just one time was strong, with an eight-person workers and a thorough system to address Maine’s oral wellness desires that provided school-centered outreach statewide. Above the yrs, cuts have left no dedicated positions in just the Maine Heart for Illness Manage and Prevention, and the School Oral Health Application now serves only about a third of Maine’s elementary faculties. For all those who are not lucky plenty of to attend these faculties, the dental safety net is sparse.

The good news is, we have an possibility to make sure that children in Maine get the preventive dental care they require to be wholesome and prosperous.

L.D. 1501, An Act to Defend Oral Wellbeing for Kids in Maine, is legislation that would develop eligibility of the University Oral Well being System to all colleges in Maine. Additionally, L.D. 1501 would reestablish the job of point out oral well being coordinator, a posture expected for Maine to access more federal funding to strengthen the state’s oral wellness technique.

These ways toward a coordinated tactic and process could improve efficiency, shore up workforce challenges and streamline obtain to preventive dental services for the about 150,000 young children and adolescents who show up at community schools in Maine.

Wisely, just about every member of the Legislature’s bipartisan Overall health and Human Products and services Committee voted in assist of L.D. 1501 previous calendar year, and the Home and the Senate voted unanimously to progress the legislation. Unfortunately, no funding has been presented for the invoice nonetheless, but lawmakers now have the opportunity to fund the proposal via the supplemental funds system.

This is a sensible financial commitment in the wellness and long run of Maine small children. For less than $2 for each kid, this system could enhance obtain to standard dental wellbeing care to all Maine’s small children. It would also make the condition qualified for hundreds of thousands of bucks of federal grant funding that we are now leaving on the desk.

With a billion-greenback spending budget surplus and dental decay fast progressing, now is the time to reinstate Maine’s crumbling oral well being software. Dental treatment really should not be a luxury, and dental disease is not a rite of passage. We have the tools to reduce condition and halt decay early. We implore Maine’s leaders to do their section and support us create a generation of healthy Maine little ones.

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