Transforming Oral Health Care Delivery

Early Childhood Caries and Sealants

The DentaQuest Institute undertakes a quality improvement project that is focused on an aspect of access, efficiency, or delivery of oral health care.

Quality improvement projects start with an oral health problem or recognized need. In 2008, the Institute investigated care for children with advanced early childhood caries. For the past nine months, Director of Analytics, Dr. Alex White, has been working with co-researchers, Dr. Man Wai Ng, Chief, Department of Dentistry, Children's Hospital Boston and Dr. Dan Kane, Director of Dentistry, Saint Joseph Hospital, Providence, to test an alternative science-based approach to managing advanced caries in young children in hospital settings. This project is mid-way through the data collection phase. Preliminary data suggests reduction in operating room utilization along with reduction in new caries and oral pain at the Children’s Hospital and St. Joseph’s Hospital test sites.

The 2009 DentaQuest Institute quality improvement project is dental sealants. Following the model used for the Early Childhood Caries project, the Institute will bring key stakeholders together to write a data-driven problem statement, review the latest literature on effective sealant interventions, identify appropriate clinical partners, and develop a protocol that targets improvements in key clinical outcomes. The clinical phase of the sealant quality improvement project is expected to begin by the end of the year and will run for an 18-month period.

Decisions about the annual quality improvement project, including focus, development, and spread, involve the Institute's Advisory Committee on Quality Improvement. This panel engages dental, medical, and community health leaders and ensures that proposed projects meet key criteria.

The committee advising DentaQuest Institute Quality Improvements for 2009 are:

  • Burton Edelstein, DDS, Professor of Dentistry and Health Policy & Management, Columbia University Medical Center; Founder and Chair, Children's Dental Health Project.
  • Charles Homer, MD, Associate Professor, Department of Society, Human Development, and Health, National Initiative for Children's Healthcare Quality, Harvard University.
  • Jeffrey Lasker, MD, Chief Executive Officer of the New England Quality Care Alliance, the Physician Network of Tufts-New England Medical Center.
  • Martin Lieberman, DDS, Dental Director, Puget Sound Neighborhood Health Centers.
  • Man Wai Ng, DDS, MPH, Dentist in Chief, Boston Children's Hospital.
  • Hugh Silk, MD, Family Physician; Faculty, Department of Family Medicine and Community Health, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester.