You are the Assistant Dental Director at Kern County Health Department (KCHD). While you were planning to spend your time away from the office this weekend, your boss wants you to prepare a Statement of Work that he/she needs to submit to the Dental Sealant Society on Monday morning. If the work statement (proposal) is done correctly, your boss will receive additional funds to purchase dental supplies, equipment, and $ 2500 to cover transportation costs for the existing KCHD School Based Dental Sealant Program.

The Mission of the California Dental Sealant Society is to help support school-based sealant programs through county health department (CHD) dental programs.

The statement of work must:

A) Include a brief description demonstrating an oral health need in the Kern County local community,

B) Address how many children served to date – actually KCHD is providing Dental Sealant to 2nd grade students only (you can use fictive numbers).

C) Address the still unmet need – KCHD would like to have additional equipment and supplies to provide dental sealants to a number of 1st and 3rd grade students in the schools with the highest percentage of children on the free and reduced lunch program (you can use fictive numbers).

D) Indicate the ability that Kern CHD has to staff its existing school-based dental sealant program,

E) Identify appropriate school-based dental sealant program staff and talk about their qualifications, language spoken, etc. (1 dentist, 2 dental assistants, 1 dental hygienist, and 1 support staff serving as liaison between schools and KCHD).

F) Provide detailed line item budget (use a fictive numbers) and budget narrative for the following:

• Dental Equipment (1 new portable dental chair, a sterilizer, 6 curing lights)

• Dental Supplies

• Transportation costs, not to exceed $2,500

G) Provide list of eligible schools in which the project will be implemented and how selected, (percentage of students on free and reduced lunch, location, as well as the number of students estimated to be served)

H) In a few words, talk about the support that KCHD is getting from the local schools for this project.

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A. Description of Oral Health Need in the kern county community

National studies demonstrate that low income children suffer the most from dental decay and have many unmet dental needs. Low income is the greatest indicator for health disparities and the main cause of lower access to dental care in Polk County. Lower access to dental care leads to more dental decay. Children experiencing dental decay can suffer from behavioral, speech and nutritional problems while being at high risk of poor educational outcomes. The School-based Dental Sealant is one means that the California Department of Health in Kern County is currently using to reach out to 5,200 low income second grade students enrolled every year in the Free and Reduced Lunch Program across more than 50 Title 1 Schools in the county. This number alone creates a nearly insurmountable task, yet a challenge that needs to be undertaken.

B. Number of children served by the Sealant program to date and the still unmet need

The School-based Dental Sealant Program in Kern County has provided dental services in classrooms of elementary schools with a high percentage of children enrolled in the Free and Reduced Lunch Program. To date, 10,000 second grade students have participated in the program with 27,000 dental sealants applied on permanent first molars of 8,000 students.

Since its inception in March 2009, the annual goal of the Sealant Program is to provide dental services to 2,600 (50% of 5,200) high-risk students annually. However, only 1,000 second grade students are being served annually due to inadequate number of mobile operatories, limited dental supplies, and limited allocation to travel costs.

With a larger mobile clinic, additional dental supplies, … Kern County Sealant team will be able to increase services provided to eligible students by 15%.

C) Kern County’s ability to staff existing school-based dental sealant program

Medicaid revenue collected under the sealant program covers approximately a third of the Sealant program cost. … (part of this revenue covers salaries)

The Kern County of Department has sufficient staff to handle its operations effectively. Currently, the program has 1 senior dentist, 1 dental hygienist, 2 dental assistants, and 1 support staff. The different staff members work as a team and strive to maintain a strong work ethic to ensure provision of high quality dental services to the students. As the schools are far apart from each other, there are comprehensive timetables to ensure that the various teams provide dental services as per the program schedule.

D) Profile of some dental sealant program staff members

Hiring employees with different specializations and background is essential to the success of health service delivery. Below is a brief profile of some staff members working for the dental sealant program:

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