Our Mission is to improve oral health in children and underserved populatioins through treatment and prevention education.

Program Values

Who We Are

The Pediatric Dental Initiative of the North Coast (PDI) was formed in 2001 when a group of health providers, child advocates, social service programs and public health programs from Sonoma, Mendocino and Lake counties joined forces to address unmet oral health needs for low income children. Initial funding to support PDI in these early planning efforts was received from:

The Problem: A Crisis in Dental Care

While local hospitals in the area have made an effort to provide dental surgery to low-income families on a below-cost basis, hospitals are forced or compelled to reduce the availability of these services due to the financial strain of providing the services. Treatment in these hospitals is always subject to competing demands for limited OR space which produce greater revenue. The result is a rapidly growing number of children awaiting dental surgery in the five-county area. Over recent years, the situation has reached the point of crisis.

Access To Care is Desperately Needed

Silent Epidemic

The Surgery Center

Located in Windsor, Sonoma County, the dental surgery center provides an oral surgery resource for children from low-income families, and children and adults with developmental disabilities, throughout Northern California.

A Replicable Model

PDI’s unique public-private partnership model utilizes the efficiencies and revenue stream of a financially self-sustaining surgery center to support important community-based services. Performing oral surgery in an outpatient surgery center setting has proven more efficient than in a hospital setting. This is due to specialization, volume, and the absence of hospital overhead costs that allow the center to receive more Medi-Cal reimbursements.

Prevention Education

In addition to addressing a significant health disparity by providing access to a desperately needed service (dentistry with anesthesia), PDI uses short-term and long-term strategies, including case management and community outreach to help prevent ECC cases in the future.

Short Term

PDI’s bilingual and bicultural case managers use the time they spend with families to discuss the importance of good eating habits, limiting the frequency of sugar intake, not permitting a child to sleep with a juice bottle, brushing, and regular visits to the dentist.

Long Term

As part of its long-term strategy to reduce the need for intervention surgery services, PDI’s outreach and education efforts include participation in health fairs, school readiness programs, community events, radio guest shows in English and Spanish, and more. These efforts to work within the community are two-fold:

FIRST SMILES ORAL HEALTH TRAINING

The Dental Health Foundation and First 5 California’s First Smiles Oral Health Training provides an existing, well-regarded dental education curriculum that PDI uses. This bilingual parent provider training curriculum helps PDI’s case managers stay up-to-date with other dental education efforts.

DENTAL HEALTH CONNECTION PROJECTS

PDI is an active participant in the Dental Health Connection Project – an oral health access coalition of service providers and oral health advocates. PDI is also an active member of several county-specific oral health coalitions and committees.

PDI referring sources (partial list)