iCubed Commonwealth Scholars Program
Oral Health in Childhood and Adolescence Transdisciplinary Core
Description of Core
The iCubed Oral Health Core is a transdisciplinary group of scholars, practitioners, and community partners who seek to identify and remove the educational, political, psychological, social, and nutritional barriers to the prevention and treatment of dental caries among metropolitan Richmond’s families.
Oral Health Core researchers include five junior faculty and four senior faculty with expertise in dental epidemiology, clinical dentistry, health care delivery, health psychology, and health policy. The Oral Health Core is actively developing community partnerships with community groups including Communities in Schools – Richmond City, Richmond City Public Schools, Henrico County Public Schools, and the Henrico Education Foundation, Inc. These partnerships are expected to result in a collaboratively developed research agenda and infrastructure that the Core will begin implementing in early 2018.
The Core is also leveraging existing partnerships and available datasets into research. These activities include a qualitative Community Needs Assessment with Sacred Heart Catholic that will address oral health among other health topics; a survey of low-income pregnant women in the VCU Health System to understand their knowledge of oral health and dental public benefits; secondary analysis of an existing dataset to describe the effects of pregnant women’s tobacco use on young children’s dental outcomes; and a mixed methods study of dental under-utilization among patients at Greater Richmond Patient Centered Medical Home Collaborative clinics that offer dental services.
Proposed Activities and Work Expectations of Commonwealth Scholar Students
The CSP students' contributions will support the Core’s progress toward meeting its goal of understanding the educational, transgenerational, social, cultural, political, and institutional contexts that shape family-wide oral health and dental utilization, and identifying opportunities to intervene to improve oral health outcomes among children, adolescents, and families in Richmond, VA. Students can indicate the project which most aligns with their professional and academic goals. See the two project descriptions below.
(a) FAMIS Moms project
The iCubed Commonwealth Scholar working on this project will work on a survey to document mothers’ knowledge of a new time-limited comprehensive dental benefit for low-income pregnant women in Virginia (“Smiles for Children” for mothers), utilization of the benefit, and knowledge regarding their children and their oral health.
Working primarily under the direction of Drs. Shillpa Naavaal and Tiffany Williams, this Scholar will assist with screening, consenting, and collecting survey data from women who seek care at the VCU Pediatric Dental Clinic and VCU Centering Pregnancy clinic, and cleaning and analyzing the data. The Scholar’s work on the project will support its meeting of the target sample size; timely completion; development of a report to DMAS identifying specific ways that implementation can be strengthened to increase enrollment and utilization in Richmond and across Virginia; and support the production of a scholarly manuscript and subsequent development of a larger research project based on this pilot study.
The FAMIS Moms project Scholar will work 6-8 hours per week during the Spring 2018 semester, with extension/renewal possible depending upon skillset.
Desirable characteristics include:
• experience gathering survey data in a health care setting
• weekday/daytime availability
• familiarity with quantitative data entry, management, and cleaning
• Spanish language bilingualism
• familiarity with working with/sensitivity to low-resourced populations
(b) Greater Richmond Patient Centered Medical Home Collaborative project
This iCubed Commonwealth Scholar will contribute to the development of a mixed methods study of dental under-utilization among patients at Greater Richmond Patient Centered Medical Home Collaborative (GRPCMHC) clinics that offer dental services. Working primarily under Dr. Sarah Raskin, this Scholar will contribute to the development of a bibliographic database on determinants of safety net dental care utilization; a research protocol including consent documents and data collection instruments; and a proposal for an R21 research grant that Dr. Raskin will develop as part of VCU’s Grant Academy (Fall 2017 cohort).
This Scholar will also contribute to piloting data collection instruments including an interview guide, an observation guide, and a data extraction guide, and be familiarized with the processes of establishing long-term multi-sited community-engaged research. This Scholar’s work on the project will support the development of an R21 research grant to be submitted in June 2018, as well as other key components of research infrastructure development including Memoranda of Understanding with sites.
The GRPCMHC project Scholar will work 6-8 hours per week during the Spring 2018 semester, with extension/renewal possible depending upon skillset.
Desirable characteristics include:
• strong organizational skills
• experience conducting targeted literature searches and abstracting literature
• comfort managing bibliographies in software
• strong capacity for self-direction if the Scholar chooses to work outside of regular business
• understanding of the Social Determinants of Health framework, or similar frameworks
• Bilingual in a major language spoken among Richmond residents with limited English proficiency, including but not limited to Spanish (others may include but are not limited to Korean, French).
Learn more about the Oral Health in Childhood and Adolescence Core faculty mentors.