5.1 Effective Program Operations

Targeting Populations

Targeting Schools

ODH considers almost half (48 percent) of all children in the surveyed grade who attend public schools in Ohio to be at higher risk based on either FRPM enrollment, Medicaid enrollment, or the fact that they are uninsured and have not had a dental visit within a year. ODH compared the effects of various school-eligibility thresholds (i.e., > 60 percent of children enrolled in FRPM program, > 50 percent enrolled, > 40 percent enrolled, > 30 percent enrolled) on oral health status and the number of children at higher risk per school. Figure 1 shows that for all the thresholds considered, children at schools with higher FRPM enrollment were significantly more likely to have dental caries than children at schools with lower enrollment. Figure 2, however, shows that the number of children per school who are at higher risk drops significantly when less than 40 percent of students at the school are enrolled in the FRPM program.7

Because of these findings, ODH revised the school-based dental sealant program-eligibility criteria for ODH-funded programs as follows:

Programs target schools in which 40 percent or more of the children are enrolled in FRPM. Schools in which 40 to 49 percent of children are enrolled in the FRPM may be served at any time during the year, if the program assures the ODH Oral Health Section (OHS) that all schools with > 50 percent enrolled in FRPM will be served during the year. Without that assurance, a program can visit only schools with 40–49 percent of children eligible for FRPM after all schools with > 50 percent of children enrolled in FRPM have been served.

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