title: A New Practice Approach for Oral Health Professionals.
abstract: The oral health care paradigm presented here would broaden oral health services to include primary health care activities focusing on risk reduction and chronic disease screening.
  
  
  
  Changes in our nation's health care delivery system, shifting patient demographics, and availability of new health insurance programs have resulted in exploration of new practice models of health care delivery. Chronic diseases require coordinated care efforts over decades of a patient's life. Oral health professionals will be part of that care.
  
  
  
  The practice model for this article was developed in the context of an academic medical center that promotes oral health care professionals as health care providers through interprofessional education. The combined experiences of the authors, including a diabetes predictive model for oral health settings, the efficacy and effectiveness of human immunodeficiency virus screening in a dental setting, the feasibility of using a decision support tool for tobacco cessation, and the effectiveness of integrating oral health education with comprehensive health services for people living with human immunodeficiency virus, have contributed to this concept.
  
  
  
  Prevention is increasingly recognized as a cost-effective means of reducing chronic disease burdens. To be effective, health promotion activities that encourage healthy living and early detection need to occur in a variety of health care settings. Oral health professionals represent an underutilized group of health care providers that can contribute to improved health of populations living with chronic diseases by broadening their scope of practice to include primary health screenings and tailored health promotion activities.
authors.affiliation: RDH, EdD, Department of Health Policy & Management, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA. Electronic address: nlm2119@cumc.columbia.edu.
authors.forename: Noreen
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Myers-Wright
authors.affiliation: DDS, MMSc, Department of Health Policy & Management, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Ira B
authors.initials: IB
authors.lastname: Lamster
mesh_terms: D003695:Delivery of Health Care; D006282:Health Personnel; D006293:Health Promotion; D006801:Humans; D009909:Oral Health; D011320:Primary Health Care; D040242:Risk Reduction Behavior
keywords: Chronic disease; Health management; Health promotion; Health systems; Interprofessional collaboration; Oral health care model