Skip to main navigation menu Skip to main content Skip to site footer

Other

Vol. 13 No. 3

CenteringPregnancy Smiles: A Community Engagement to Develop and Implement a New Oral Health and Prenatal Care Model in Rural Kentucky

  • Robert E. Kovarik
  • Judith Skelton
  • M. Raynor Mullins
  • LeAnn Langston
  • Sara Womack
  • Jack Morris
  • Dan Martin
  • Robert Brooks
  • Jeffrey L. Ebersole
Submitted
July 22, 2010
Published
2010-07-22

Abstract

CenteringPregnancy SmilesTM (CPS) is a partnership between the University of Kentucky, Trover Health System, and Hopkins County Health Department. The purpose of the partnership is to: (1) establish an infrastructure to address health problems requiring research-based solutions, (2) develop a model for community partnership formation, and (3) address problems related to preterm births and low birth-weight infants and early childhood caries in a rural, seven-county region in western Kentucky. This area is below state and national norms in education level of the population, income, and oral and general health. The partnership implemented a new prenatal care model that significantly reduced preterm and low birth-weight births for participating women, thus significantly improving the infants’ health while saving an estimated $2.3 million dollars in health care costs for acute care of premature infants in this population and enabling the expansion of dental outreach services for children in Hopkins county.