The Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center (LSUHSC) New Orleans School of Dentistry has been awarded a five-year, $1.8 million grant by the Health Resources and Services Administration to support a community-based dental partnership.
Under the direction of Robert Barsley, DDS, JD, the program is designed to educate dental and dental hygiene students about caring for patients with HIV/AIDS, provide dental services to this patient population, and monitor quality of care, the university noted in a press release.
Clinical care for HIV-positive patients and dental education are provided at the Community HealthWorx Clinic in Alexandria, LA, as well as at the LSU HIV Outpatient (HOP) Clinic in New Orleans. Central Louisiana AIDS Support Services, a community-based AIDS agency in Alexandria, provides case management by identifying patients from central Louisiana who request or require dental care, facilitating their treatment, and assessing patient satisfaction. Those patients come from a very large geographic area of central and south Louisiana.
This is the third consecutive competitive grant the LSUHSC School of Dentistry has been awarded for this program, which has been continuously funded since 2002. In 2012, more than 2,000 services were provided at the Community HealthWorx Clinic and more than 6,000 at the HOP Clinic to more than 1,100 patients in both locations, according to Dr. Barsley.
The School of Dentistry at LSUHSC New Orleans is the only dental school in Louisiana.
