Dental Champions - Oral Health Kansas

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Dental Champions - Oral Health Kansas

Dental Champions is a leadership program developed by Oral Health Kansas.

The program offers participants leadership and personal development training as well as other training focused on planning and organizational skills and up-to-date information about the oral health scene in Kansas and the nation.

12/07/2025

During the annual Conference on Oral Health, we provided various resources in real time to our audience through an online bulletin board. We wanted to share with our WWU supporters the resources our “Give and Get Board “had assembled through Padlet, an online bulletin board. Please look through this report and utilize what you find valuable! You can find the report on our conference webpage https://www.oralhealthkansas.org/Conference.html

If there’s anything you are hoping to see, email us at info@oralhealthkansas.org .

12/06/2025

December is recognized as the Month of Giving, a time when generosity, compassion, and community spirit shine brightest. We honor the individuals and groups who continually invest in their communities by improving oral health for all. Their actions inspire hope, strengthen relationships, and build a foundation of shared purpose that lasts long after the holiday season. It creates healthier Kansans!

As the year comes to a close, people around the world take this opportunity to reflect, give back, and support meaningful causes. At Oral Health Kansas, we lead with our mission: To improve oral health in Kansas through advocacy, public awareness and education. Consider making a donation to Oral Health Kansas to support our mission and our work. You can click here to make a donation. https://www.oralhealthkansas.org/Donate.html

12/05/2025

Missouri Coalition for Oral Health (MCOH) will be welcoming a new Executive Director this month, although it’s not a new face! Jessica Emmerich is currently MCOH’s Dental Medicaid Facilitator and will become the Coalition’s second Executive Director, succeeding Gary Harbison, who is retiring after 14 years. We’re excited to keep working with Jessica who has been a friendly adviser to OHK as we navigate our own work around Medicaid. We also wish Gary well as he enters this new chapter. He has been a close partner to our organization throughout his tenure at the Missouri Coalition for Oral Health. Under his leadership the state established adult dental benefits and a huge Medicaid dental rate increase. We are inspired by the leadership of both Gary and Jessica in Missouri, and we look forward to many more years of partnership.

12/04/2025

On Tuesday, December 9, 2025, at 6:00pm CST, hear from a team of experts on a webinar titled The Oral Systemic Connection: The Importance of Oral Health in Patients with Intellectual or Developmental Disorders (IDD).
Description: As more evidence emerges reinforcing the connections between oral and overall health, effective interprofessional communication and collaboration become crucial for providing the best possible patient care. This ongoing education series delves into the overlap between oral health and overall well-being across various disease states, offering perspectives from a team of expert faculty members.
Learning Objectives:
• Review the necessity of and challenges in delivering oral healthcare to patients with IDD.
• Describe models for successful and consistent outcomes in care in this population.
• Discuss interprofessional communication best practices to provide optimal care for patients with IDD regarding oral and systemic health.

You can register here!
https://conexianteducation.cdeworld.com/webinars/register/23434-the-oral-systemic-connection-the-importance-of-oral-health-in-patients-with-intellectual-or-developmental-disorders-idd

12/03/2025

At the end of its first full year, the Pathways to Oral Health partners stopped to take note of the measurable progress and begin to plan the work ahead. Twenty-one members of the Pathways team from thirteen organizations attended a retreat on November 21 at the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library to reflect on our work to improve the Medicaid dental program and dental care for people with disabilities. Partners celebrated milestones including the redesign of My Dental Care Passport and a successful social media and marketing campaign. A new one-stop resource website was created that now includes a host of educational resources for consumers and providers as well as blogs about a wide range of topics. The Pathways initiative created a video series on adaptive oral care for people with disabilities and provided new provider training programs, including a Project ECHO series, informed by community and dentist input.

The Pathways partners have strengthened collaboration across organizations and created a strong and recognizable brand. A significant policy win was the Medicaid dental rate increase, which reflected strong relationship-building with legislators. Throughout the retreat, the partners celebrated the initiative’s growing impact, strong branding, and the unified effort driving its success as we look ahead to the future. A quote we heard from the group that resonated with us is “Pulling the sled together.” And that’s exactly what we’re all doing with this initiative. We couldn’t do this work without our partners.

Also, we want to let our facilitators Cy Rogers and Zane May from Wichita State University's Community Engagement Institute know how much we appreciated them. They made the meeting flow so well!

12/02/2025

It’s Giving Tuesday, which is a time for people to come together to make an impact in people’s lives by supporting nonprofits.

For over 20 years, Oral Health Kansas has been at the forefront of advocating to ensure every Kansan has access to the dental care they need. By donating to Oral Health Kansas, you will be able to ensure we continue our mission to improve oral health in Kansas through advocacy, public awareness and education.

Your gifts support our work to:

• Advocate to increase the Medicaid dental rates to be consistent with commercial rates.
• Explore ways to increase access to dental care for Kansans with disabilities.
• Engage in activities to preserve existing community water fluoridation.

We ask you to be here for us so we can continue to be here for you. Please consider making a gift today.

Tanya Dorf Brunner
Executive Director

You can view our 2026 Public Policy Priorities here: https://www.oralhealthkansas.org/PublicPolicy.html

Donate here: https://www.oralhealthkansas.org/Donate.html

11/26/2025

This year, we are thankful for our Board of Directors, funders, volunteers and partners. Each of you have supported us in the work we do and we are excited to keep moving forward!

We hope everyone has a Happy Thanksgiving! Don't forget to brush those teeth!

From the OHK Staff,
Tanya, Kathy, Sonia, MaryAnne, Bryan, Abby and Monica

The Oral Health Kansas office will be closed Thursday, November 27 and Friday, November 28.

11/24/2025

Congratulations to our former intern, Isha Kothari for winning the In Your Own Words storytelling contest through the Kansas Health Institute. The contest highlights the impact of public health in Kansas. Isha’s story is one that many parents have endured but may not know where to get help. Quiet Battles: How Public Health Gave Me My Voice Back, is Isha’s personal story about postpartum and finding resources to help. We appreciate her vulnerability to share! Read her full blog at this link:

https://www.khi.org/articles/quiet-battles-how-public-health-gave-me-my-voice-back/

11/23/2025

November is National Diabetes Month, where health professionals and advocates across the US come together to increase awareness about diabetes. Diabetes is one of the fastest growing chronic diseases in the world. Nearly one in two Americans has diabetes or prediabetes, and diabetes is the eighth leading cause of death in the US. There have been numerous advancements in diabetes knowledge, treatment, and care over the past few decades, but there is still much more to be done to prevent and cure diabetes and to improve the lives of all people affected by the disease. Health professionals need to be able to educate their at-risk patients about the oral-systemic connection in diabetes and the importance of best oral care practices. Health literacy tools such as the Oral Health Nursing Education and Practice's Oral Health and Diabetes fact sheets in English and Spanish can be shared with patients to help them understand their role of maintaining good oral health in preventing and managing diabetes. For more diabetes and oral health resources, their OHNEP Interprofessional Oral Health Tool Kits for undergraduate and graduate nursing contain a wealth of resources on the connections between diabetes and oral health!

11/22/2025

Oral Health Kansas is seeking an intern to help us with our projects. This past summer we had two interns develop a new data dashboard and now we need someone to continue the work on analyzing and presenting Medicaid data. This internship is virtual. All communication is done via Zoom, phone calls or emails.

Fill out this application if you’re interested! If you have any questions, email us at info@oralhealthkansas.org

11/21/2025

In September, the Accessible Oral Health ECHO: Building Confidence in Dental Teams to Serve People with Disabilities webinar had a series for five weeks and had over 100 participants! Now the webinar is available on demand at no cost. Thanks to funding from Delta Dental of Kansas, access best practices, tools, and resources for providing oral health care to people with disabilities available online, 24/7, for CE credit at no cost. This virtual learning series is a valuable resource perfect for sharing with colleagues, partners, and students, and it even makes a great team-building activity! Access the series at this link: https://bit.ly/ECHO-On-Demand.

11/20/2025

On October 31, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced new restrictions on fluoride supplements. The announcement states that fluoride supplements should not be used for children under age three and only used for children over age three who are at high risk for tooth decay. In May the FDA signaled they may ban fluoride supplements altogether, so this announcement is a better outcome than many in the oral health community feared it would be. Nonetheless, the new restrictions signal new risks to the oral health of people living in communities that do not have access to optimally fluoridated water.

The American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry (AAPD) issued a statement that they along with the American Dental Association and American Academy of Pediatrics affirm “that the use of fluoride in prevention of caries is safe and effective.” In their statement, the AAPD said, “We strongly support fluoride supplementation as a method to prevent caries, particularly in communities without fluoridated water and for all children with high caries risk.” In the AAPD’s statement there are links to several useful resources on best practices for the use of fluoride.
https://www.aapd.org/statement-on-recent-fda-announcement-to-fluoride-supplements/

People living in communities like Wichita, which is the largest city in the state that is not optimally fluoridated, have relied on fluoride supplements for decades as the best way to ensure children grow up with strong teeth. Oral Health Kansas shares in our national partners’ concerns about limitations on access to fluoride. We will continue to monitor the situation and share resources from our national partners as they become available.

Our partners at the Oral Health Progress and Equity Network (OPEN) host monthly calls about fluoride and community water fluoridation. The next meeting is on December 3 at 2 pm CT. Anyone is welcome to participate. Register here to attend: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/329BBVmJSv2I-M-SZ1RIOQ

Address

PO Box 4567
Topeka, KS
66604

Telephone

+17852356069

Website

http://ksdentalchampions.org/

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