New Grant to the Promising Program Builds on Foundation's Prior $7.5 Million Investment

LOS ANGELES (September 6, 2007) – The California Endowment today announced its commitment of nearly $6.8 million over 36 months to a program that helps boost the diversity of California’s dentist work force, integrates coursework and clinical experience that improves dentists’ ability to competently serve multicultural communities, and delivers much needed dental services to underserved communities. This new funding builds upon $7.5 million in grants The Endowment has provided to support the program since 2003.  

The grant made to the University of the Pacific, Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry for the California Dental Pipeline Program is a partnership among all California’s five dental schools. The program provides assistance to disadvantaged, underrepresented minorities who have completed their undergraduate course work to successfully enroll in dental school, and provides dental students coursework and clinical experience in cultural competency to prepare them to treat the state’s racially and ethnically diverse patient population. In addition, the dental schools will form partnerships with Federally Qualified Health Centers throughout the state.

Through the program, dental school senior students and residents gain experience serving racially and ethnically diverse communities by spending an average of 60 days providing dental care services in these community clinics to low-income Californians who otherwise would not have access. An estimated 89,000 low-income Californians will receive dental care through the pipeline program each year.  

“California has a critical shortage of dentists practicing in disadvantaged, underserved communities,” said Ignatius Bau, program director for The California Endowment. “By boosting the number of underrepresented minorities enrolled in California’s dental schools, we can create a pipeline of Latino and African American dentists who, as research has shown, are more likely to practice in communities where there are critical issues of access to oral health care and documented disparities in oral health.”   According the Journal of Public Health Dentistry, rural, low-income, and minority communities in particular suffer from California's geographic maldistribution of dentists. These communities either have shortages of dentists or no dentists at all.  

"This funding represents a tremendous opportunity for dental schools to partner with community clinics and others to improve the oral health of underserved Californians,” said Dr. Paul Glassman, Pacific’s associate dean for information and educational technology and director of the advanced education in general dentistry program.  “The collaboration of all five California dental schools, the California Dental Association, and the California Primary Care Association in this program is unique in the country. We look forward to using these relationships to demonstrate new models of care and to create and maintain oral health for all Californians."     

Dentistry remains among the least diverse of the health professions. In California, only 4 percent of dentists are Latino and 2 percent are African American. In the four years since the California pipeline program began, the percentage of first-year underrepresented minorities enrolled in California’s dental schools has increased from 5 percent to 11 percent.  

“While these numbers are encouraging, we still have a long way to go. We need many more dental students from underrepresented communities and many more dentists who will help meet the oral health needs of California by practicing in underserved areas and in settings such as community clinics. We are proud to continue to support the dental schools in building on their accomplishments in diversifying the oral health workforce and in addressing the oral health needs of underserved Californians,” added Bau.  

The California Endowment, a private, statewide health foundation, was established in 1996 to expand access to affordable, quality health care for underserved individuals and communities, and to promote fundamental improvements in the health status of all Californians. The Endowment makes grants to organizations and institutions that directly benefit the health and well-being of the people of California. To date, The Endowment has awarded nearly 9,200 grants across California totaling more than $1.7 billion. For more information, visit The Endowment’s Web site at www.calendow.org.