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Rural Health Information Hub

Rural Health
Resources by Topic: Dental workforce

Tennessee Uninsured Adult Healthcare Safety Net: 2025 Annual Report
Reports on Tennessee's uninsured population, state safety net funding, and services provided in 2025. Lists safety net service locations, including community and faith-based clinics, Federally Qualified Health Centers, dental clinics, and more. Provides county-by-county data on primary, oral, and specialty care population-to-provider ratios, and includes county-level maps of Health Resource Shortage Areas. Mentions rural throughout.
Date: 01/2026
Sponsoring organization: Tennessee Department of Health
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Health Professional Shortage Areas: Dental Care
Printable map that shows nonmetropolitan and micropolitan dental care HPSAs on one color scale and metropolitan dental care HPSAs on another. Data source: data.HRSA.gov
Date: 01/2026
Sponsoring organization: Rural Health Information Hub
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Development and Implementation of the Indian Health Service Expanded Function Dental Assistant-1 (EFDA-1) Occupation
Report describing the Expanded Function Dental Assistant-1 (EFDA-1) role within the Indian Health Service. Includes information about its implementation, its importance in rural and underserved areas, and its place in Washington's dental workforce and related career pathways.
Author(s): Natalia V. Oster, Grace A. Guenther, Paula M. Kett, Samantha W. Pollack, Susan M. Skillman
Date: 12/2025
Sponsoring organization: UW Center for Health Workforce Studies
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State of the U.S. Health Care Workforce, 2025
Offers demographic data on a variety of health professions from data sources between 2019 and 2024. Examines distribution, education and licensing, and projected shortages for the physician, nursing, and oral health fields. Describes challenges contributing to health workforce shortages. Highlights nonmetropolitan workforce shortages and state by state comparison of physician distribution.
Date: 12/2025
Sponsoring organizations: Health Resources and Services Administration, National Center for Health Workforce Analysis
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2025 West Virginia Health Sciences and Rural Health Report
Review of medical school enrollment, licensing rates, student debt ratios, residency training, and retention rates in West Virginia, with special focus on the Rural Health Initiative Program. Includes dental and pharmacy program profiles, and describes the Medical Student Loan Program and the Health Sciences Service Program, providing financial awards to health professionals who agree to practice in underserved areas of West Virginia.
Date: 12/2025
Sponsoring organization: West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission
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Building a Sustainable Oral Health Workforce in Pennsylvania: Strategies for Reinvigorating Dental Careers and Strengthening the Pipeline
Features recommendations to guide efforts to build a strong and sustainable dental workforce pipeline for Pennsylvania, by increasing supply of providers and improving retention rates. Mentions rural throughout.
Date: 09/2025
Sponsoring organization: Pennsylvania Department of Health
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Description of a Collaborative Rural Dental Scholar Program
Discusses a series of initiatives to increase Alabama's rural dental workforce through a partnership between The University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Dentistry and The University of Alabama College of Community Health Sciences. Describes the interventions designed to get rural students interested and participating in oral health training. Details a summer program for high school students, a pathway program for post-grads, and scholarships for participating students.
Author(s): Carly Timmons McKenzie, Paul Drake Lavender
Citation: Journal of Dental Education, 89(9), 1356-1361
Date: 09/2025
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Oregon Dental Health Professional Shortage Areas
Shows a county-level map of Oregon map identifying Dental Health Professional Shortage Areas (HPSAs).
Date: 09/2025
Sponsoring organization: Oregon Office of Rural Health
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Washington's Rural Oral Health Workforce
Highlights challenges in access to oral healthcare in rural Washington, workforce shortages, and geographic disparities. Emphasizes the need for strategies to support recruitment, retention, and training of oral health professionals in underserved areas. Features demographics and statistics on oral health professionals, with breakdowns by rural and nonrural areas, and Washington maps showing distribution of various oral health professionals, with shadings indicating rural and nonrural counties.
Date: 08/2025
Sponsoring organization: UW Center for Health Workforce Studies
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The U.S. Dentist Workforce: Based on the Latest Available Data from Multiple Sources as of August 2025
Explores who makes up the dentist workforce, how and where dentists work, how practicing dentists are faring economically, and the future of the dentist workforce. Features statistics including the dentist-to-population ratio and average revenue per dentist, with breakdowns by urban and rural areas.
Date: 08/2025
Sponsoring organizations: American Dental Association, Health Policy Institute
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