Henry Schein has partnered with disability rights nonprofit the Viscardi Center on a new coalition to raise awareness of and address the need for oral healthcare for people with disabilities.
Project Accessible Oral Health (PAOH) will address the barriers that people with disabilities face when accessing oral healthcare, including accessibility challenges in the dental office, trouble paying for treatment, and difficulty obtaining dental coverage. The coalition also seeks to educate dental practitioners about the needs of children and adults with diverse disabilities.
To kick off the project, PAOH will host a two-day meeting at the New York University College of Dentistry on October 26-27. The meeting will explore how to improve access to oral healthcare for people with disabilities, including with keynote talks by Steve Perlman, DDS, MScD, founder of Special Olympics Special Smiles, and Rabbi Kalman Samuels, founder of the Shalva Children's Center in Jerusalem.