Center for Research to Evaluate & Eliminate Dental Disparities

描述（由申请人提供）：东北牙科差异评估与消除研究中心（CREEDD）致力于通过研究、培训和行动消除口腔健康差异。我们的努力将建立在早期和持续的社区参与、社区研究干预、综合培训和职业发展、广泛传播研究成果以及有针对性的卫生政策举措的坚实基础之上。CREEDD以波士顿大学为基地，将与马萨诸塞州、马里兰州和俄亥俄州的合作机构保持目前的区域方法。一个多样化、多学科和多机构的团队将实施旨在减少幼儿龋齿的社区干预研究项目。我们的组织主题是让非牙科保健提供者参与口腔健康促进，并将口腔健康促进的场所直接扩展到健康差异社区的非临床保健机构。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The Northeast Center for Research to Evaluate & Eliminate Dental Disparities (CREEDD) is committed to the elimination of oral health disparities through research, training and action. Our efforts will build on a strong foundation of early and continuous community engagement, community-based research interventions, integrated training and career development, broad dissemination of research findings, and targeted health policy initiatives. Based at Boston University, the CREEDD will maintain its current regional approach, with partnering institutions in Massachusetts, Maryland and Ohio. A diverse, multidisciplinary and multi-institutional team will implement community-based intervention research projects aimed at reducing early childhood caries (ECC). Our organizing theme is engaging non-dental care providers in oral health promotion, and extending the venues for oral health promotion to non-clinical care settings directly in health disparity communities. The two major community-based intervention research projects will be: Project #1 (D&IR Project) - Partnering with Community Health Centers to Prevent ECC (D&IR Project) Physician-delivered interventions, targeted at children aged 1 to 3 years old, with include fluoride varnish applications, patient-centered counseling, and systems-level changes to clinical information systems and clinical prompts used in order to include age-appropriate, oral health-specific anticipatory guidance items. Project #2 - Oral Health Advocates in Public Housing Resident Health Advocates (RHA), trained peer health advocates, will incorporate motivational interviewing and community oral health promotion activities into their ongoing health promotion efforts targeting caregivers with children from birth to 5 yrs old, aimed at caries risk reduction and lowering incidence of ECC. We will use a community-based cluster randomized study design, in Project #1 with community health centers (CHC) as the unit of randomization, with CHC located in Boston, Maryland, and southeastern Ohio; and in Project #2 with individual public housing developments in Boston as the unit of randomization.