Recently, the Puget Sound Business Journal reported that Washington leads the nation in access to dental care for low-income children! Fifty-four percent of our Medicaid eligible children are receiving dental care.
Our success is due largely in part to a program called “Access to Baby and Child Dentistry” or “ABCD”. ABCD links children from low-income families with dentists trained in pediatric care. ABCD was started in Spokane 20 years ago by two University of Washington Dental School professors, and now exists in every county in Washington. Other states have even modeled their pediatric dental care programs after ABCD.
Dental care for children is crucial because we know that dental disease causes development delays, speech problems, lost school days, poor self-esteem and physical pain. And, dental disease is still the single most common chronic childhood disease —five times more common than asthma.
Even worse is that low and middle income and minority children suffer from dental disease at much greater rates than their more-affluent peers – accounting for 80% of patients.
Whether or not a child receives dental care should not be based on the color of their skin or the size of their parents’ bank account. Washington is on a great track to ensuring that all children can access quality, safe, dental care – but we still have a lot to do to eradicate childhood dental disease. Let’s keep up the good work!