Center to Address Disparities in Children's Oral Health

加州大学旧金山分校提议成立一个解决儿童口腔健康差距的中心，两个主要机构合作伙伴服务于少数族裔人口，即旧金山公共卫生部和圣伊西德罗社区卫生中心，这是一个位于美墨边境附近的示范卫生中心，以及其他合作机构。该中心的主题是了解、预防和减少幼儿口腔健康差距，主要重点是预防儿童早期龋齿。第二个主题是了解口腔健康和医疗输送系统之间的相互作用，这些系统可以影响儿童的口腔健康。这些目标将从两个主要方向实现：基于数据的回溯性项目，以增加我们对口腔健康差异的病因的了解，并确定最易受影响的儿童；以及干预项目，以预防疾病。在该中心，我们将1)主要支持与缩小儿童口腔健康差距有关的以患者和人群为导向的研究；2)建立核心设施，为中心附属项目提供技术服务和资源；3)为培训未来的卫生保健专业人员和科学家提供丰富的环境，特别是来自代表性不足群体的卫生保健专业人员和科学家；4)建立机制，加强研究人员在中心支持的项目中、跨卫生专业和附属的西海岸公共和私营机构合作。该项目的成果将1)确定与加州环境非常多样化的民族/种族之间的健康差异有关的文化、环境、劳动力、行为和生物因素；2)增强我们针对可能有龋齿风险的儿童的能力；3)提供成功的跨学科干预措施，以预防疾病和减少口腔健康差异。

A Center Addressing Disparities in Children's Oral Health is proposed at the University of California, San Francisco, with two primary institutional partners serving minority populations, the San Francisco Department of Public Health and the San Ysidro Community Health Center, a model health center located near the US-Mexican border, and additional collaborating institutions. The theme for this Center is to understand, prevent, and reduce oral health disparities among young children, with a primary focus on preventing early childhood caries. A secondary theme is to understand the interactions between the oral health and medical delivery systems that can affect children's oral health. These goals will be pursued from two primary directions: retrospective data- based projects to increase our understanding of the etiology of oral health disparities and to identify children most susceptible, and intervention projects to prevent disease. In this center we will 1) Support primarily patient and population-oriented research related to reducing oral health disparities in children; 2) Establish core facilities to provide technical services and resources to Center-affiliated projects; 3) Provide an enriched environment for training future health-care professionals and scientists, especially those from under-represented groups; 4) Establish mechanisms to increase collaboration among investigators in Center- supported projects, across health professions and affiliated collaborating public and private institutions on the west coast. Findings from this project will 1) identify cultural, environmental, workforce, behavioral, and biologic factors associated with health disparities among the ethnic/racial groups in the very diverse California environment; 2) enhance our ability to target children likely to be at risk for dental caries; 3) provide successful interdisciplinary interventions to prevent disease and reduce oral health disparities.