With critical oral health disparities rising in El Paso, Texas Tech Health El Paso is launching the Borderland Dental Leaders: Building Bridges program with a $400,000 grant from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. Scott Brocato recently spoke with Dr. Alyssa Benavides, Managing Director of the Office of Professional Education at TTHEP; and Dr. Christiane Herber-Valdez, TTHEP’s Assistant Vice-President of Academic Affairs, about the program.
Scott Brocato:
Dr. Alyssa Benavidez, tell us about the Building Bridges program and who will benefit from it?
Dr. Alyssa Benavides:
So the El Paso and West Texas region will benefit from our Future Dental Leaders program. Specifically, we will be working with the ISDs, our local ISDs, first to provide screenings for students who self-report as regularly vaping to check on their oral health. The second is that we will be connecting our local high schoolers with mentors from our schools; so our dental, medical, our biomed school, and our nursing school. So, we'll be implementing a mentorship program for those high schoolers.
Along with that, we will be supporting the existing efforts from Texas Tech Health El Paso's dental school to build a pipeline, so we'll be modeling it off of our medical school pipeline. So, students who will be graduating from high school will be receiving mentoring and guidance throughout their undergrad process. So, hopefully, they'll be applying to our school and be gaining entry into our dental school as well.
And the third is that the community in general will be benefiting from our program. Our program includes an aspect where our promotoras, our community health outreach and education workers, will be working with our dental faculty, our dental and medical students to provide community health education on the effects of vaping on the oral health and overall health of our bodies.
Scott Brocato:
Let's talk about the oral health disparities that's been rising in Texas, and El Paso in particular. Reading out a couple of data points provided by Texas Tech Health El Paso, the US-Mexico border region contains over 5,800 dental health professional shortage areas, with El Paso County having a provider-to-population ratio of one dentist for every 5,000 individuals. What are the reasons for such disparity in this region, Dr. Herber-Valdez?
Dr. Christiane Herber-Valdez:
So the entire region is considered a health profession shortage area, and has been for a long time. We have not had these health professions programs in the region other than nursing.
When we launched our dental school, that was the first dental school that was opened in Texas in 50 years. When we were working on getting approval in Texas to open a dental school, we saw that students who entered dental degrees at other institutions in Texas, they end up practicing in those cities where they went to school. And so even though there were individuals that came from El Paso going to other dental schools, those dentists never came back to El Paso. We need to bring more El Paso residents into our programs, because we have seen now that those students that come from the region and get their degrees here at our institution, they are much more likely to stay in the region. So that's actually one of the major missions of our institution is to address these shortages.
Scott Brocato:
The data also reports that more than 60% of children in El Paso suffer from dental issues, 20% higher than the national average. Why such a higher number of dental issues here among children?
Dr. Christiane Herber-Valdez:
El Paso is located directly on the border. Our population is very dynamic, constantly changing. We have constant immigration and an influx of people. So I think that's one reason. Of course, other reasons are financial reasons, lack of insurance, and lack of transportation. There are many barriers that would lead to residents not having the means or the access to healthcare, including dental care (such as ) lack of education.
So these are all barriers and challenges that we recognize exist in our community. And that is why we are implementing programs such as this grant program to assist our community to provide the education that's needed to create the awareness that's needed. And also to send our healthcare workers into the community to provide, in this case, screenings for children to address some of these needs that folks are facing.
Scott Brocato:
Dr. Benavides, a while ago you mentioned one of the services provided has to do with helping students with vaping-related issues or damage. What kind of oral health damage is caused from vaping?
Dr. Alyssa Benavides:
Dental caries is one. And I think one of the most innovative parts of this project is that there is a gap in research. Vaping is still relatively new. And so what we know is that tobacco and marijuana, smoking tobacco and marijuana, because of research that has been previously conducted, has a connection to dental caries and could have a connection over the long term for precancerous oral lesions.
What there's less research on is what we hope that our project is going to be able to provide: that the early research is showing that vaping, tobacco, and marijuana does have a connection to dental caries. What we don't know, because the research is still relatively so new, is whether or not there is a connection to precancerous lesions, at least in the adolescent population, because usually that takes a good amount of time to be able to develop in the mouths of human beings. And adolescents in the past would not have been smoking for that extended amount of time. What we do know is that vaping effects happen a lot faster, and what we're curious about is that if that's also leading to precancerous oral lesions for adolescents that have been vaping regularly for a good amount of time.
Scott Brocato:
When do you look for the Building Bridges program to be ready?
Dr. Alyssa Benavides:
So we're implementing. We were awarded in the summertime, in the late summertime of this academic year, so ‘25, ‘26, and we're implementing now. So the three aspects of it, connecting with our community partners, specifically UTEP and the ISDs, is something that we are initiating.
The screenings should be happening, I would say, within the next two months, two to three months. Our promotoras, our community health, our certified community health outreach and education workers, will be visiting with students, provided we have the proper consents and approvals; and taking pictures using intraoral cameras of the mouths of the students who are self-reporting as regularly vaping. And then those images will be transferred over to our dental pathologist who will be looking at those images.
Scott Brocato:
And where can listeners find out more about the program?
Dr. Alyssa Benavides:
We will actually be launching a website that's part of our grant program is we'll be launching an informational website within the next two months as well. So we'd like them to visit our main website. It is ttuhscep.edu. And within the next two months, they should see a webpage that will provide additional information on the project.
