Without the assistance of the dental hygiene and dental assisting students and School of Dentistry faculty, the community cannot, at the current time, improve its capacity to accomplish this mission. The immigrant population in this community should be a source of patients for this project for many months assuming adequate funding to treat them can be procured. In addition, if the projected incorporation of preventive values is accomplished, this pool of patients can be considered a resource for continued recall appointments and can be relied upon to recruit patients from within the community to have initial preventive therapy. The Lay Health Advisors can also continually serve to initially inform and screen new patients from this population. Long term funding for access to care issues has been of growing concern in both medical and dental care arenas.
Limited funding is available for immigrant populations.
Through private foundations, initiatives and pilot projects such as this one have been started. Unfortunately, the cost of care to patients is not negligible in dentistry. Fortunately, the federal government is trying to address this issue and the project leader will be attending a national conference in April 2001 which will be dealing with funding issues in access to care. In addition, multiple avenues for funding of this project will be explored both through the private and public sectors. The main objectives of this project are two fold.