Call for Papers Supplement on Oral Health for People Living with HIV/AIDS

The Surgeon General’s 2000 Report, Oral Health in America, identified multiple factors that impact access to oral health care including socioeconomic factors, lack of transportation, presence of disability or chronic illness, lack of dental insurance, and personal factors such as lack of awareness about the importance of oral health. These access barriers are particularly important for people with chronic illnesses or compromised immune systems, including people living with HIV, because of the connection between overall systemic health and oral health. Yet today, 10 years after the Surgeon General’s Report was issued, many needs assessments targeting people living with HIV/AIDS find that dental care remains the greatest unmet need. This lack of access to oral health care perpetuates the disconnect between systemic and oral health that is so problematic for people with compromised immune systems.

In 2006 the HIV/AIDS Bureau of the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) funded the Innovations in Oral Health Care Initiative as a Special Project of National Significance (SPNS). The goal of this five-year initiative is to expand access to oral health care for underserved HIV-positive populations across the country. The associated evaluation has been designed to determine whether the demonstration programs increase access to oral health care for people with HIV and whether participants experience improvements in oral health outcomes over time, and to identify best practice, replicable strategies that promote access to oral health care for people living with HIV.

The Guest Editors for this supplement invite manuscripts that advance scientific knowledge and public health research, practice, and policy related to oral health among people living with HIV/AIDS. Researchers and practitioners affiliated with the HRSA SPNS initiative may submit manuscripts for consideration, as may other interested parties. Manuscripts addressing the following broad range of topics will be sought:

• Replicable program models that increase access to oral health care for people living with HIV
• Outreach and retention strategies to encourage people living with HIV to receive oral health care
• Best practice interventions to improve oral health outcomes for people living with HIV
• Financing strategies that can sustain oral health-care programs
• Strategies to improve efficiencies with which oral health-care services are provided to people living with HIV
• Integration of oral health care into primary health-care programming for people living with HIV
• Care provision strategies that increase treatment plan completion rates
• Documenting of oral health status and needs of people with HIV
• Methods to overcome/address patient barriers to engagement and retention in oral health care, such as comorbidities including substance abuse and mental health
• Strategies for improving training programs to educate providers about how to deliver quality treatment to patients with HIV
• Educating patients with HIV on the importance of oral health care and self practices
• Initiatives to promote continuous quality improvement activities specific to HIV and oral health

Manuscript requirements: Articles in PHR are typically 3,000–4,000 words in length. All manuscripts will be reviewed by the PHR Special Editorial Committee (SEC) for this supplement. The SEC determines which manuscripts are sent for external peer review and which manuscripts are published in the Supplement.

Deadline for submission: January 1, 2011. The anticipated publication date for this Supplement is January/February 2012.

Submission of manuscripts: Manuscripts for this Supplement should be e-mailed to manuscripts@publichealthreports.org. Please include “Attention Oral Health and HIV/AIDS” in the subject line of the e-mail. Your manuscript submission should also include a separate cover letter that describes its relevance to the Supplement. If you have any questions about this supplement, please contact Dr. Sara S. Bachman (617-353-1415; sbachman@bu.edu). If you have any questions about PHR, please contact the Acting Editor, Laurence Reed, at 513-636-0257; LaurenceReed@cchmc.org

PHR is a peer-reviewed journal of the U.S. Public Health Service and the U.S Surgeon General. It is published in collaboration with the Association of Schools of Public Health. PHR is the oldest journal of public health in the U.S. and has published since 1878. The journal is widely distributed internationally, and is indexed by MEDLINE/Index Medicus, Current Contents, EMBASE/Excerpta Medica, Pais International, and LexisNexis. More information on the journal, including author guidelines, is available at www.publichealthreports.org