New Educational Video Resources Will Support Patients, Caregivers, Clinicians
Philadelphia — Penn Dental Medicine is developing and making publicly available new educational video resources to support patients, caregivers, and clinicians alike. One project is designed to enhance the medical-dental integration efforts at the School’s community care center at PHMC Public Health Campus on Cedar in West Philadelphia and another to educate patients and caregivers of persons with disabilities. The development of these resources is being made possible, in great part, through funding partners Benjamin & Mary Siddons Measey Foundation and the Delta Dental Community Care Foundation Access to Care Grant Program, respectively.
“We are tremendously grateful to both Measey Foundation and Delta Dental for their investment in our efforts to provide oral health education resources to patients, primary healthcare providers, and caregivers,” says Morton Amsterdam Dean Dr. Mark S. Wolff. “They will add to our ability to impact the oral health and outcomes of those we serve.”
Enhancing Medical-Dental Integration
When establishing Penn Dental Medicine on Cedar – the School’s newest community care center that opened for patient care in January 2024 – medical-dental integration was by design central to the program. At the PHMC Public Health Campus on Cedar, the dental care center is part of a campus that also includes a federally qualified health center, an emergency room, inpatient and behavioral health services, and a crisis response center for pediatric mental and behavioral emergencies. With all these health resources under one roof, it is a priority to put steps in place to facilitate the integration of dental and other patient care services. One big step toward integration has been combining access to electronic patient records, so patients’ medical and dental histories are available in a single system. And now, work is nearing completion on video resources to increase the knowledge and skills of medical and dental faculty and staff on medical-dental integration. Both initiatives have been supported by the Measey Foundation.
“As we collaborate with our healthcare partners to integrate dental and medical care and improve referral and care coordination, these videos will fill a need for targeted professional education on key dental care issues,” says Dr. Joan Gluch, Professor of Community Oral Health, who is managing the production of the videos. These collaborations include in-office dental care professionals screening for diabetes with hemoglobin A1c testing for at-risk individuals, tobacco-cessation counseling, and seamless appointments made for primary care in the dental care center.
A Penn Dental Medicine public health dental hygienist and dental faculty member conducted a series of meetings and educational discussions with staff physicians, nurses, and medical assistants at PHMC on the connection between oral and systemic health and key oral health issues throughout the lifespan. The three video presentations, which are in the process of completing production, are an adjunct to those discussions and will provide ready access to this information on an ongoing basis. The topics include an overview of the systemic/oral health connections with particular attention to the bidirectional relationship of diseases and health and the rationale for referral programs, best practices in oral examination and referral practices among the medical and dental teams, and oral health issues throughout the lifespan. The videos are designed for all medical and dental team members and focus on actionable behaviors with the goal of developing protocols to improve oral/systemic management and referrals. They all include supporting references for further information.
The final videos are expected to be available this summer. In addition to being used at PHMC on Cedar, these educational videos will be shared with the healthcare teams at the other Penn Dental Medicine community sites.
Supporting the Oral Health of Persons with Disabilities
New video resources are also being developed as a key part of a three-year grant from the Delta Dental Community Care Foundation. This initiative aims to enhance oral health knowledge and practices among disabled patients, seniors, home caregivers, nurses, and other direct service providers through targeted education and training.
“Enhancing the knowledge and attitudes of caregivers can lead to behavior changes that result in improving the oral health of those individuals with disabilities under their care, as well as their own,” says Dr. Stephen Abel, Clinical Associate Professor at Penn Dental Medicine and the co-principal investigator on the grant with Dr. Gluch.
To date — over the first year and a half of the grant — 13 focus groups, involving 150 individuals representing home caregivers, nurses, and other direct service providers, have been conducted to learn about their attitudes and behaviors regarding oral hygiene for persons with disabilities under their care. Caregiver recruitment was assisted by staff from The Arc of Philadelphia, an advocacy and resource center for individuals with disabilities, which is serving as a project consultant and will also serve as a training site once the videos are completed.
From the focus groups, 10 thematic categories emerged regarding gaps in knowledge, attitudes, and other barriers to caregivers delivering oral healthcare, which became the topics for the educational videos. Those topics include an overview of the importance of oral health; the caries process and prevention; strategies for managing patients who are resistant and highly resistant/aggressive to oral healthcare; tools and supplies (mouth props, retractors, toothpastes, toothbrushes); common medically related challenges; best food choices; identifying a dental practice; and shared decision-making.
Featuring Penn Dental Medicine faculty, staff, and other experts from around the country, filming has been completed and editing is underway. The edited versions will then be reviewed with focus groups for feedback before the final versions are released. It is anticipated that the final videos will be available before the end of the year. They will be accessible via the Penn Dental Medicine website and the project partners’ websites for use in individualized, small-group, and virtual training sessions. In addition to the videos, the website will include a wide range of resources that caregivers across the country will find useful when it comes to matters of oral health – from product guides to service centers for persons with disabilities.
Dr. Abel stresses that the goal is to share this resource as widely as possible and notes that the School is in discussion with Arc’s national headquarters to possibly leverage their national reach to build awareness of the videos once available. “We want this resource to be as accessible as possible,” adds Dr. Abel, “and help to create an online community of support for caregivers.”