2023 Goals
COHN has a five-year plan to expand preventive oral health services to all schools in Maine while connecting children with urgent needs to available providers. COHN partners are also supporting pediatricians to integrate oral health services into well-child visits and embedding hygienists in primary care practices. For families who are facing challenges finding a dental home, we are refining a model of community-based care called the Virtual Dental Home and ensuring financial sustainability for Maine’s nonprofit dental centers. We are also developing strategies to address the urgent workforce shortages that leave children without options for dental care. None of this can be accomplished by one organization alone. Building trust over time has helped our diverse Network members collaborate to achieve these important goals and nurturing relationships is a continuing focus.
Fundraising/Event Opportunities
COHN manages the Network’s financial resources to support collaborative work on three strategic priorities:
- Integrating oral health into primary care
- Expanding oral health care into school and community settings
- Transforming Maine’s oral health care system so that it truly serves all people in Maine
Raising funds as a network of partners for coordinated strategies allows us to maximize the contributions to achieve large-scale systemic changes. This will ensure high quality oral health care reaches more Maine children, not just once but year after year. We work with foundation and corporate partners to match grants and leverage funds from multiple sources. Individuals and businesses interested in supporting this work can donate through a link on our website (https://www.mainecohn.org/donate).
Giving Opportunities
Our mission-based strategic initiatives focus on driving changes in the oral health system to address a broad range of oral health needs and barriers in Maine with the aim of providing opportunities for success in school, the workforce and family life for generations to come. The business community can support our work financially, as detailed above, or contact us to learn about how to support initiatives in your area through the contact form on our website: https://www.mainecohn.org/get-involved Businesses can also examine their benefits packages and human resources policies to ensure that employees and their families have access to affordable, quality dental insurance and flexible/paid time to get care for themselves and their families.
Volunteer Opportunities
COHN welcomes partners in our work – in fact, that is entirely how we work – through partnerships with organizations committed to our shared vision. If you care about oral health and ensuring that children can get the dental care they need to succeed in school and live a healthy life, we can help you find a role in our Network. We’d love to support your involvement in improving children’s oral health in many ways including:
- Introduce you to partners in your area to collaborate on action to ensure more children get oral health care
- Support you to write letters to the editor or testimony to support oral health efforts at the local and state level
