Building the future oral health workforce in New York: New solutions to close the dental care gap

For too many New Yorkers, getting dental care is harder than it should be. A 2024 oral health needs assessment found that 43% of New York respondents reported major barriers to care, including difficulty finding a dentist who accepts their insurance, transportation challenges, and trouble locating services at all. Nationally, the gap is also stark. According to a 2024 report from CareQuest Institute for Oral Health (CareQuest), about 57 million Americans live in a dental health professional shortage area, and 27% of U.S. adults—about 72 million people—do not have dental insurance, nearly three times the share who lack medical insurance.

That disconnect has real consequences. Dental care is generally detached from medical coverage, leaving many people to navigate a separate and often unaffordable system for care that is deeply connected to overall health. When people can’t get preventive or routine treatment, problems worsen, often ending in emergency rooms, which aren’t set up to address underlying dental issues. Nationally, tooth disorders accounted for an average of 1.94 million emergency department visits per year from 2020 to 2022, with Medicaid the most common expected payer. 

That is why the combined entity of Common Ground Health (CGH), Finger Lakes Performing Provider System (FLPPS), and Rochester Regional Health Information Organization (RRHIO), has continued to focus on oral health as both a workforce and an equity issue. “Oral health has been one of those areas where workforce gaps continue to prevail,” said Melissa Wendland, director of strategic initiatives. “Ten years ago, we were already having conversations with Eastman Dental, community-based organizations, and others around the dire need for access to dental health.”

That work eventually grew into a partnership with the Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy through the Future Oral Health Workforce Project, supported by CareQuest. The effort brought together more than 100 stakeholders, including providers, researchers, advocates, and people from communities facing the greatest barriers to care, to identify challenges and develop solutions. The resulting policy roadmap includes 54 recommendations to strengthen New York’s oral health workforce and improve access to care, particularly for low-income New Yorkers, Black and brown New Yorkers, rural residents, and people with disabilities. 

The Schuyler Center has also developed new tools for visualizing oral health needs across New York State. Data from the Oral Health Needs Assessment for New York, produced by the Center for Health Workforce Studies at the University at Albany, is now available in an interactive format. Regional data reports for individual NYS economic development regions are also being released on a rolling basis (visit the Oral Health Workforce page to see what is available).

“Dentists are not going to solve our problem alone. That’s a long-range solution,” Wendland said. “We had to start asking: what is feasible and actionable now? What can be done in the short term, and what’s going to take longer?”

Some of those recommendations focus on prevention, care coordination, triage, and oral health literacy. But as the work continued, Wendland said a central reality became impossible to ignore: prevention alone is not enough if people still cannot get treatment.

CGH/FLPPS/RRHIO has worked to build community-based solutions. For example, Wendland is spearheading an oral health training pilot for community health workers. The short course, which is being offered as an additional certification connected to the Ibero American Action League’s Community Health Workers certificate program, equips trusted frontline workers to educate residents, promote oral health, and connect people to services in the communities they serve. Efforts to grow the workforce are also happening locally, including through Eastman Institute for Oral Health’s paid Dental Assistant Training Program.

At the same time, New York has taken steps to expand the role of existing providers. In late 2025, the state enacted legislation allowing eligible dental hygienists to provide certain services without onsite supervision under a collaborative practice agreement with a dentist, beginning in June 2027. The law is designed to help experienced hygienists work more autonomously in settings such as schools, federally qualified health centers, hospitals, and long-term care facilities. 

Still, Wendland said, New York must continue to look at options that increase capacity for dental treatment. That is why Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy, CGH/FLPPS/RRHIO, Community Health Care Association of New York State (CHCANYS), the New York State Dental Hygienists’ Association, the American Dental Therapy Association, Community Catalyst, and HealthEfficient, have come together to raise awareness of dental therapy and educate policymakers and providers about what is happening in the states where dental therapists currently practice. 

Dental therapy as a solution

Dental therapists are licensed members of the dental team who work under a dentist’s supervision and can provide routine services such as exams, fillings and simple extractions. They are now authorized to practice in 14 states in at least some settings, and advocates point to growing evidence that they can safely and effectively expand care in underserved communities. 

The effort is also continuing through public education. Partners are hosting two upcoming webinars on dental therapy: Introduction to Dental Therapy: How a Community-Driven Workforce Model is Increasing Access to Care and Improving Health Equity on June 23, and Findings from a Scoping Review of Dental Therapy Research on June 30. (Register for both here.) 

“Dental therapy legislation is essential because it adds another part of the care team that can actually provide treatment,” Wendland said. “If we’re serious about closing dental deserts, we have to be serious about building a workforce that can meet people where they are with the services they need.”

From Albany to Washington, DC: the role of oral health policy

That work is now moving into a broader policy conversation. Earlier this month, Wendland was in Albany helping organize and facilitate a discussion with Assemblymember Carrie Woerner and leaders from state government, advocacy organizations, and care delivery systems about the potential role of dental therapists and the future of oral health workforce reform in New York.

In her role as chair of the New York State Oral Health Coalition, Wendland also took part in federal advocacy through the Oral Health Progress and Equity Network (OPEN), a national initiative of CareQuest. OPEN’s 2026 Hill Day took place June 3–4, 2026 in Washington, D.C. In meetings with congressional offices representing New York, advocates focused on protecting Medicaid oral health funding, ensuring oral health is represented in federal agencies, and expanding access to dental care for veterans—an area that often draws bipartisan support. One of the measures highlighted was the Dental Care for Veterans Act (H.R. 210), which would expand veterans’ eligibility for dental services through the VA. This comes as Congress has recently advanced other oral health-related spending and legislation, including support for Health Resources Services Administration (HRSA) oral health training, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) oral health activities, the Action for Dental Health Act, and the Promoting Dental Health Act.

For Wendland, all this work comes back to one core message: "Oral health is health.“

Our system still doesn’t include oral health as part of overall health,” she said. “And when people don’t have access to treatment, the consequences show up everywhere—in emergency rooms, in missed work and school, in pain, and in the inequities communities are living with every day.”

As the combined entity of CGH/FLPPS/RRHIO and statewide partners continue pressing for change, the goal is clear: strengthen the oral health workforce, expand treatment options, and make sure more New Yorkers can get care before a dental problem becomes a crisis.

"At the end of the day, people need someone who can pull a tooth and fill a cavity,” says Wendland.