Excellence in Oral Health Care for People with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities
Presented by Kyle Isaacs, RDHEP
Benton County Oregon Health Services
Course Description: People with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) are less likely to have regular dental care due to the limited number of dental professionals who are trained to provide care to this population. Compared to the general population, people in the I/DD population experience more chronic disease at an earlier age as well as oral health issues at a much higher rate. In addition to the lack of trained dental providers, there are a multitude of other barriers that contribute to dental access issues for the I/DD population. In addition to training dental professionals on best practices for caring for this population, providing care where the I/DD population live and decreasing other barriers, will help to bring much needed dental care to them. This can be accomplished with the help of teledentistry.
Learning Objectives:
- Recognize oral conditions that are common among people in the I/DD population;
- Describe the health conditions that affect this population and how they relate to oral disease;
- Explain various ways to provide compassionate dental care for the I/DD population and how teledentistry can aid in doing this;
- Identify barriers to dental care for the I/DD population
Kyle Isaacs is an expanded practice dental hygienist (EPDH) at the Benton County Oregon Health Services building providing dental hygiene care for low-income patients. She started a mobile dental hygiene business in 2014 taking care of low-income patients in a local church, long-term care facilities, schools, adult foster care homes, and private residences for patients who are not ambulatory. She writes a monthly dental blog for a local organization supporting families of young children and teaches the oral health unit for certification for community health workers. In addition to speaking, she is a published author in RDH Magazine and a recipient of the 2017 SUNSTAR Award of Distinction as well as the 2018 HuFriedy/ADHA Master Clinician Award. Kyle is a member of the AADH, ADHA, ODHA, NNHH, DHHAPA, and ADHP.
This speaker has declared no commercial conflict of interest relative to this presentation.