Pilot program provides oral health services to long term care facility residents through service learning and...

Old Dominion University School of Dental Hygiene in Norfolk, Virginia, created an innovative preventive oral health program at Lake Taylor Transitional Care Hospital, a long term care facility located in coastal Virginia. The program had two main short-term goals: to increase the number of residents who receive preventive and therapeutic oral health services and to enhance future dental hygienists' learning experience with this diverse vulnerable population through service learning. The anticipated long-term goals are to improve quality of oral health care and overall health of long term care residents, to prevent potential disease, and to reproduce this model at other long term care facilities to improve access to care.