The MCHB-funded School-Based Comprehensive Oral Health Services (SBCOHS) grant program 2011–2015 was designed to demonstrate the successful integration of comprehensive oral health services into primary care in an existing SBHC. Under this program, SBCOHS projects delivered high-quality oral health services (i.e., education and preventive and restorative care) to students in preschool, elementary school, and/or middle school with the greatest need. By augmenting an existing SBHC delivery system with culturally competent, comprehensive, high-quality oral health services, SBCOHS projects demonstrated effective ways to strengthen existing SBHC capacity. SBCOHS projects were also designed to respond to children's and adolescents' oral health needs and to increase access to oral health services for underserved populations at high risk for dental caries, including children and adolescents enrolled in Medicaid and in the Children's Health Insurance Program.
Multiple approaches were used by SBCOHS projects to successfully organize and arrange for the delivery of oral health services in SBHCs. SBCOHS projects were organized using variations of school-based and school-linked models. Projects that were school-based used contracts and memorandums of understanding to obtain services from nonprofit oral health organizations and university-based training programs or were affiliated with federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) or FQHC lookalikes. Projects that were school-linked had health center affiliations or agreements with independent mobile/portable oral health care programs, oral health professionals, and coalitions to provide oral health services.
