New Voices for Oral Health Equity: Announcing our 2024 Grantees

What does achieving oral health equity in Colorado look like? At Delta Dental of Colorado Foundation, this is a question we continuously explore with our grantees and leaders across various sectors. Our 2024 grantees bring new voices to this effort, and with this being my first grant cycle as executive director of the foundation, I am eager to announce our newest partners.

The foundation awarded more than $1.67M across 18 organizations aligned with our prevention and access to oral health care initiatives, which address the root causes of oral health disparities. The individuals we impact are at the core of our grants and our mission to advance oral health equity. Listening to our communities has been crucial in determining their highest needs and crafting our response strategies.

Collaboration: The Cornerstone of Success

Success in our mission hinges on collaboration and partnership, particularly at the intersection of funders, providers, philanthropy, community, and government. Every piece of the grantmaking puzzle is valuable and necessary, from conception to implementation. It’s our responsibility to nurture these symbiotic relationships and ensure that they are healthy and sustainable.

We’re already seeing these efforts come to life through a new facet of our prevention initiative, the Healthy Universal Preschool Collaborative. This partnership between the foundation, the early childhood sector, and local government integrates dental screenings into statewide Universal Preschool Program settings. This investment is central to DDCOF’s commitment to funding preventive oral health care for children ages 0–6, ensuring a child has access to regular oral exams within a dental home and maintains good oral hygiene habits at home. We’re excited for the rollout of this program in the fall.

This is one example of a program that built off the successful foundation of our CO MDI Project, which pioneered medical-dental integration. This created positive outcomes for providers and patients across the state and provided more than 70,000 visits for patients who otherwise may not receive care due to insurance status, transportation, geography, or socioeconomic status.

Celebrating our Unique Role and Looking Forward

As the only funder in Colorado dedicated exclusively to oral health, it’s incredibly rewarding to see the throughline of past initiatives and successes lead to new innovations and partnerships.

This is the final slate of grantees to be funded in our three focus areas of workforce development, accessing oral health care, and prevention. With our grantees, we’ve learned about what has worked, listened to our communities, and had a positive impact on the oral health of tens of thousands of Coloradans of all ages.

From the family looking for affordable oral health care, to the community that needs a mobile dentist, to the practice that has struggled in the past to hire hygienists, Coloradans are benefiting from the work of our community partners. I’m incredibly proud of the due diligence that the foundation team has dedicated to ensuring our grantees do all they can to provide quality oral health care for all.