Program Information

Mobile Health for Dental Care is a 12-part, monthly virtual learning series delivered through the Project ECHO tele-mentoring model as the inaugural program of the Global Mobile Medical Association's "Improving Community Health Outcomes through Mobile Care ECHO Program." The activity convenes clinicians, program leaders, and care-team members who operate — or are preparing to launch — mobile and portable dental programs in community, school-based, and safety-net settings. Mobile and portable dental programs are a powerful means of expanding access to oral health care for underserved populations, yet they frequently encounter operational, workforce, financial, and data-infrastructure challenges that determine whether a program can be sustained. This series addresses that practice gap by building participant capacity across the core domains of mobile dental program operations and by creating a peer community in which programs learn from one another's real-world experience.

Each monthly session follows the ECHO "all teach, all learn" format: a brief didactic presentation on a focused operational topic, followed by a real, de-identified case presented by a participating program and discussed collaboratively with subject-matter experts and peers. The opening session, Program Kickoff and Field Overview, orients participants to mobile dentistry as a care-delivery model — distinguishing portable, mobile-unit, and hybrid/tele-dentistry approaches; outlining the essential operating components of a program; and examining the common reasons new programs stall, illustrated through a real-world community health center case study. Over the full series, participants gain practical, transferable strategies to strengthen clinical workflow, workforce, community partnerships, quality measurement, care integration, and financial sustainability — with the shared goal of improving access to care and health outcomes in the communities they serve.

This activity meets from 12-1pm ET for a 1-hour presentation monthly. 

Target Audience

This activity is appropriate for the following audiences:

• Dentists

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this activity, participants should be able to do the following

• Describe the unique role demands of mobile vs. fixed-site dental staff.
• Identify scope-of-practice flexibilities (expanded-function dental assistants, public health hygienist authorization) by state.
• Build a retention plan addressing the top three drivers of mobile-staff turnover.
• Design a cross-training matrix so the unit can run when one role is out.