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Sponsored by: Northeast Delta Dental
Updated: March 8, 2021 Diversity / Equity / Inclusion 2021

Northeast Delta Dental

Racial disparities in oral health

Northeast Delta Dental has an important role to play addressing social justice and racial equity in our communities and our fellow human beings.

We developed a strategic initiative to embed equity, inclusion and diversity into everything we do. With this in mind, we continue to develop a diverse board and workforce that will provide broad perspectives and enrich our ability to find innovative solutions to solving the problem of racial inequity in oral health. We continue to forge relationships with communities in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont by partnering with them and following their lead to develop sustainable, community-based solutions. We work collaboratively toward policy solutions and public/private partnerships that support and further this work, like expanding the dental benefits for adults on MaineCare.

Our organizational 2020 racial diversity initiatives focused primarily in three areas: communications, board diversity, and employee education. We’re implementing ways to make our communications with stakeholders more inclusive, we’re making a more focused effort to increase diversity among our board members, and we’re offering diversity training to our employees. These are areas of potential improvement for all businesses and nonprofits.

At Northeast Delta Dental, we believe that everyone deserves a healthy smile. Because we are committed to providing oral health care that is inclusive, we began considering how we could positively impact inequities in oral health. We found that much social science research has been done on the presence of health disparities in communities of color, but less has focused on the drivers of disparity, making it a complex problem to address. Experts agree that racism exacerbates health inequities in historically marginalized communities and that solutions to addressing these challenges rest on putting the lived experiences of these communities at the center of any possible intervention. We also learned from scholars and practitioners in the field that operating on preconceived notions of a community’s priorities without testing those assumptions may fail to achieve any sustained impact on oral health disparities. The strategy we ultimately employ will reflect community-centered priorities for improving oral health.

Northeast Delta Dental Foundation continues to fund programs increasing oral health access to underserved people in Maine. In 2020, we invested $889,000 in Maine oral health programs — $169,000 awarded as grants by the Foundation, and $720,000 to support key initiatives related to expanding access. We welcome these opportunities for a deepened commitment to oral health equity and inclusion at every level of our company, because everyone deserves a healthy smile!

— Tom Raffio, President and CEO of Northeast Delta Dental