Highlighting the Center’s Role in Addressing Oral Health Workforce

The North Carolina Medical Journal published a piece by Andy MacCracken, director of the NC Center on the Workforce for Health, mapping out strategies for collaborative action to address urgent challenges facing North Carolina’s oral health workforce. The article builds on the Center’s inclusion in the North Carolina Institute of Medicine (NCIOM) recent report, Transforming Oral Health Care in North Carolina, which envisions a facilitative role for the Center in aligning public and private sector action.

The article maps out several principals for actions, building on existing infrastructure through the NC Health Talent Alliance and the Center’s capacity building efforts, to support work in oral health.

As recognized by the NCIOM task force’s report on oral health transformation in our state, more work is required to define and measure the scope of North Carolina’s oral health care workforce challenge and educate key constituencies about the urgency of these issues.

The Center is continuing to build internal capacity so that we can better serve the capacity of the broader community to confront these often-entrenched issues. To animate the ideas of the report, the Center is committed to putting its core principles into practice.

The task of our time is to align the remarkable resources, organizations, and interests to focus on tangible action where it is most needed. The Center is committed to supporting that action.

Andy MacCracken in NCMJ Article