kentucky

Published on

Lexington Herald Leader

FRANKFORT – The oral health of Kentucky’s school children is worsening, even though more of them are covered by dental insurance today than 15 years ago.

A new report was presented Wednesday to the state’s legislature’s Interim Health and Welfare Committee, following on an earlier statewide study conducted in 2001. The report’s authors found that 41 percent of third- and sixth-graders surveyed by a dentist had at least one untreated cavity. In Eastern Kentucky, that figure rose to 53 percent, amounting to about 15,100 children in immediate need of a filling.

Read Full Article

Published on

Kentucky Center for Economic Policy

The proposed changes to Kentucky’s Medicaid expansion include the elimination of dental coverage from the package of benefits for adults. Reducing access to dental care would likely lead to other, more serious health problems and cost the state more in overall Medicaid spending through greater use of emergency room services. Dental care makes up a small portion of the overall budget, but is a very efficient preventative medical service that is critical in Kentucky given our poor oral health.

Read Full Article

Published on

The Pew Charitable Trusts

Poor dental health continues to be a problem throughout Kentucky, but the situation is particularly severe for low-income residents, people living in rural areas, the elderly, pregnant women, and people with special needs, according to a report released on Feb. 24 2016 by the Center for Health Workforce Studies at the University at Albany.

Read Full Article

Published on

Insider Louisville

There is some good news when it comes to dental health in Kentucky, according to a new report from the Center for Health Workforce Studies at the University of Albany. The study was financed in part by the Pew Charitable Trust and was compiled using interviews with stakeholders with an interest in oral health in Kentucky.

Read Full Article

Published on

PBS Kentucky Educational Television

As the saying goes, what gets measured, gets changed. While the oral health status of Kentuckians is widely acknowledged as needing improvement, the hard numbers to support this claim have not been aggregated and presented to the public in a comprehensive way – until now.

Read Full Article

Published on

Kentucky Health News

More Kentuckians than ever have access to dental care because of Medicaid eligibility for dental insurance, and the state has made some gains in oral health, but finding a dentist can still be a problem, especially in rural Kentucky. And even though children on Medicaid have dental insurance, more than half of them don’t get any dental care.

Read Full Article