The target populations for the provision of oral health care include urban American Indians, homeless women and children, and low-income elderly. The persons targeted for enhancement of a diverse and culturally competent and sensitive health professions workforce are students from a local high school, students and faculty within the College of Nursing. This project is critically needed because of the disparity of care for persons with low income. The relationship between poverty and poor health is significant.
Oral health is an area of health care that has often been overlooked or trivialized.
This project will address the need for oral health care by providing assessment of need by the Nurse practitioners who practice in one of the four satellite clinics of the Center for Nursing. Treatment of oral health needs will be provided by opening the Akron Health Department's Dental Clinic additional hours specifically for the treatment of those person's referred by the nurse practitioners from the Center for Nursing. This project will address nursing workforce issues by providing opportunities for undergraduate and graduate nursing student's clinical experiences that include working with ethnically diverse populations. Another aspect of addressing workforce issues is increasing enrollment and retention of minority students in nursing. This project provides for exposure of students to nursing roles through the activities of Pre-Nursing Clubs in a high school that has a high percentage of minority students.