Our Mission
Our mission is to elevate the well-being of all Coloradans by advancing oral health equity.
Health disparities are exacerbated when people do not have access to oral health care. We work each day to increase everyone’s access by prioritizing and funding initiatives in areas that address root causes of oral health inequities.
We address our mission through our Theory of Change.
The State of Oral Health In Colorado
Source: 2021 Colorado Health Access Survey
Our work is grounded in research and driven by community partnerships, and we are prioritizing three focus areas where additional resources can help create oral health equity for everyone:
Prevention
Goal: To increase the number of children under the age of 6, their parents, and pregnant individuals who receive preventive oral health services in easy-to-access settings.
What Success Looks Like: Increase preventive care utilization, improve oral health, and tangibly integrate oral health care services within early childhood and maternal health care settings.
Oral Health Care Access
Goal: Create a community-led, data-driven, place-based strategy that supports all individuals having affordable, accessible, and comprehensive oral health care.
What Success Looks Like: Create systemic change and equitable advancement in the community while influencing and informing policies that increase access to oral health care for community members to develop a blueprint for future programs that can be replicated.
Workforce Development
Goal: Create a more racially and ethnically diverse oral health workforce that reflects the demographics of our state, resulting in further reduction of access-to-care barriers and increasing culturally and socially relevant oral health care delivery.
What Success Looks Like: Increase diversity in the oral health workforce, resulting in prosperity for oral health professionals who identify as Black, Indigenous, or people of color and increased access to care for diverse communities.
