A BROADER VIEWOF HEALTH: - UCLA School of Public Health

Health Care Policy and Research and he has been actively involved in national,
state and professional oral health policy development ever since. From 2000
to 2008 he was director of the Health Resources and Services Administration/
Maternal and Child Health Bureau National Oral Health Policy Center, colocated
within the Center for Healthier Children, Families and Communities.
Crall also directs a pediatric dentistry leadership training program in collaboration
with other members of the center’s faculty. Since 2007 he has been project
director of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry’s Head Start Dental
Home Initiative, which is building networks of providers in every state to
improve access to dental services for children in Head Start programs.
Crall, who was part of Andersen’s national evaluation team for the Dental
Pipeline Program, believes public health efforts to address the current challenges
in oral health require a combination of innovative training initiatives and community
programs, along with policies that effect change in the practice environment,
such as increased reimbursement and other incentives to work with underserved
populations.
The subspecialty area of dental public health is small, Crall notes; it will
take more than dentists to make a difference. “We need to encourage more dentists
to go into public health, but we also must find ways to foster collaborations
with non-dentists in public health and medicine,” he says. “That’s now occurring
at UCLA in a way that we haven’t seen before, and it’s a goal that has gained
increasing recognition at the national level.”
M.P.H. Degree Informs Her Effort to
Organize American Indian Dentists
Nowhere are oral health problems more severe than among American Indians. The last
survey by the Indian Health Service (IHS), published in 1999, found that 87 percent of
American Indian children ages 6-14 and 91 percent of 15-19 year olds had a history of
tooth decay. Seventy-eight percent of adults ages 35-44 and 98 percent of those 55 and
older had lost at least one tooth because of dental decay, gum disease or oral trauma.
Dr. Ruth Bol (M.P.H. ’09), a pediatric dentist in private practice in Menifee, Calif.,
who is herself American Indian, is drawing on her UCLA School of Public Health
education to organize American Indian dentists in response to the problem. Bol worked
four years with the IHS (part of the U.S. Public Health Service) and became frustrated
with the lack of leadership, which she believed had much to do with the scarcity of
American Indians among the dentists practicing on the reservations.
So she worked her way up the ranks of the Society of American Indian Dentists
(Bol is currently vice president), was elected to the California Dental Association board
of directors and became active in the American Dental Association. Realizing the value
a public health education could bring, Bol enrolled at UCLA for both her pediatric dentistry
residency and M.P.H. from the School of Public Health. With a grant she wrote in one of
her School of Public Health courses, Bol secured funding from Delta Dental of California
to support the Society of American Indian Dentists’ efforts to mentor American Indians
before, during and after dental school. She is currently meeting with other potential
funders.
“The more I got involved with these big-picture issues, the more I realized there
was a lot I didn’t know,” Bol says. “Getting the M.P.H. has given me credibility as well
as knowledge on everything from developing and evaluating programs to writing grants.
It’s provided me with the tools to work with underserved communities.”
Ruth Bol, D.D.S. M.P.H. ’09
7
feature UCLAPUBLIC HEALTH