Oral Healthcare Task Force

Currently Meeting: First Wednesday of each month, 7:30-8:30 PM via Zoom

This task force sustains ABLE NH’s contributions to building an oral healthcare program serving adult Medicaid recipients with disabilities.

The Zoom link for Oral Health Care Task Force meetings can be found on our Community Events Calendar.

Task Force History: ABLE NH Improved Access to Dental Care

During 2018, ABLE NH’s Nashua chapter built a coalition of allies to address the severe, inequitable, and invisible unmet oral healthcare needs facing adults with disabilities across NH who are Medicaid recipients. Current public health policy seeks to change perceptions so that oral health becomes a component of general health. In NH, adults with disabilities on Medicaid are only covered for emergency extractions and infections; restorative and preventative dental care is out of reach leaving people at risk for significant health complications like diabetes, heart disease, and lung disease.

Prior to the HB 692 (2019), buried deep within NH RSA 126-A:5, XIX, this statute prevented NH’s Dept of Health & Human Services from altering access to oral healthcare for adults with disabilities who receive Medicaid benefits. The members of ABLE NH engaged people with disabilities to undue this misstep in policy by coordinating with all relevant stakeholders to start an information and awareness campaign calling for the NH Legislature to allow the NH DHHS to ensure adults with disabilities on Medicaid to access appropriate dental care.

HB 692 melded into HB 4 which Governor Sununu signed in July 2019. It succeeded in undoing the prohibition in RSA 126 and created a public planning process for the development of an implementation plan to incorporate an adult dental benefit in the Medicaid Care Management Program!  Once running, the program will cover people with and without disabilities -that’s 50,000 mouths!

Thanks to Rep Jennifer Bernet, ABLE NH members & other champions of oral healthcare,  NH is building an oral healthcare program for adults w/ disabilities on Medicaid!