Dr. Woosung Sohn and Dr. Athanasios Zavras Awarded $3 Million HRSA Grant

Boston University Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine (GSDM) faculty members Dr. Woosung Sohn and Dr. Athanasios Zavras were recently awarded a $2.8 million Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) grant entitled “Transformative, Team-based Dental Care for Vulnerable Children: Integrated Training and Practice” where Dr. Sohn is Program Director / Principal Investigator and Dr. Zavras is Co-Program Director / Co-Principal Investigator. Dr. Sohn is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Policy & Health Services Research and Director of the Advanced Specialty Education Program in Dental Public Health. Dr. Zavras is a Professor in, and Chair of, the Department of Pediatric Dentistry.

This new grant, which has a proposed budget of approximately  $2.8 million, will allow the two faculty members to put into action the educational framework for a new, integrated, multidisciplinary clinical care model for vulnerable children in which several healthcare professionals across the campus—including those in the Department of Pediatrics, the School of Medicine, the School of Public Health, the School of Social Work, and Sargent College—will participate in patient care and resident training.

Over the course of five years—starting in 2015 and ending in 2020—this program will create and evaluate a transformative, multidisciplinary, team-based pediatric dental care model that will address the needs of underserved children and children with special health care needs. Clinical and didactic curricula will be designed to support the vulnerable populations served and to foster a team-based practice. New educational modules that address oral health disparities and population health, as well as cultural competency, will be developed to integrate into existing pediatric dentistry and dental public health curricula.

The grant will also support training of nine residents in a pediatric dentistry and dental public health combined specialty training program. The first two years of the combined training program will entail patient-care-focused pediatric dentistry training, with a third year of population-focused dental public health training. Besides the nine primary trainees, a total number of about 70 residents (50 PD and 20 DPH) will be educated by the program. The combined training program will be enriched by the unique team-based healthcare delivery model as well as coherent community-based public health experience with continuity to address the inherent weaknesses of current dental specialty training. The primary focus of the combined program will be training of dentists from underrepresented minorities or disadvantaged background.

Access to quality dental care is a struggle for children affected by poverty or disability. The dental workforce is not yet fully equipped to meet these children’s needs, and this new clinical care program will help remedy that. It will prepare dentists not only in an emerging model of care, but also train them to fulfill their primary care responsibility. Additionally, it will work to improve dentist retention in sites that serve underserved, disabled, and vulnerable populations by providing them with knowledge, skills, and competencies needed to handle disparities in oral health and access to dental care.

The ultimate outcome of this program will be:

• A new model to provide oral healthcare to vulnerable individuals, and
• A cadre of well-trained, experienced dental specialists with the potential to become independent leaders in dentistry, who strive to improve access to care and address oral health disparities.

“I am pleased to hear of the recent Health Resources and Services Administration grant awarded to Dr. Sohn and Dr. Zavras to fund their innovative multidisciplinary program,” said Dean Jeffrey W. Hutter. “Dr. Sohn and Dr. Zavras’s program is certainly a welcome contribution to the GSDM community and the profession of dentistry.”