Community Voices West Virginia is one of the many members of the West Virginia Oral Health Task Force. Its purpose is to improve oral health in that state.

The West Virginia Oral Health Task force was formed as part of a coalition in 1999 and focused on improving access to dental care for adults making the transition from welfare to work.

The task force received a $75,000 grant from the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation to raise awareness about oral health, to serve as a catalyst to change perceptions and expectations about oral health, and to work with other health advocacy organizations to develop and advocate policy and program proposals to improve oral health.

The site has recently established an oral health chair in a clinic in Charleston and a screening program for children and adults in partnership with the Community Council of the Kanawha Valley.

"We are constantly working with our community partners to assess oral health needs," says former Community Voices West Virginia Project Director Renate Pore. In 2000, the site successfully campaigned to have SCHIP include dental sealants in its program. "I think we really impacted that issue," says Pore.

The West Virginia site also participates in a program using funds from the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program to provide oral health care to adults seeking to reenter the job market. Services to adults in the TANF program and children receiving sealants through SCHIP are provided by individual private dentists who have agreed to participate in each program.

Community Voices West Virginia is advocating expanding the TANF program to adults not in the welfare to work program and to establish an oral health director in the State Department of Health.

"We need to create a focus on oral health in state government," according to Pore. "We don't have that now." Within the next year, the West Virginia site is planning to advocate having SCHIP provide preventive dental services to children.

"We are working hard to set an example for other health centers nationwide by developing strategies for increasing oral health access for children," said Dr. Richard Meckstrauth, the West Virginia Oral Health Task Force's chairman. According to Dr. Meckstrauth, accessible dental care is a universal goal among Community Voices programs nationwide.

West Virginia is known as the "most toothless state." Due to poverty, lack of information and misunderstanding about oral health, and the isolation of many parts of the state, West Virginia has developed a backlog of significant and serious oral health challenges.

The task force's efforts are aimed at preventing oral disease and ultimately eliminating the now widespread prevalence of unmet oral health needs.

Community Voices West Virginia participates in monthly oral health conference calls with other Community Voices learning laboratories. The conference calls provide a network and information resource about the best practices around the country.

"In the next year, we will be seeking funds for a dental summit from the Health Resources and Services Administration and other special grant funds related to raising awareness about oral health needs in the state," said Rilla Murray, the West Virginia Oral Health Task Force's Project Director.

In May 2001, the task force participated in the National Governors' Associations' Policy Academy on Children's Oral Health Access and Outcomes in Nashville, Tennessee.