CenteringPregnancy Smiles: A Community Engagement to Develop and Implement a New Oral Health and Prenatal Care Model in Rural Kentucky

CenteringPregnancy SmilesTM (CPS) is a partnership between the University of Kentucky, Trover Health System, and Hopkins County Health Department. The purpose of the partnership is to: (1) establish an infrastructure to address health problems requiring research-based solutions, (2) develop a model for community partnership formation, and (3) address problems related to preterm births and low birth-weight infants and early childhood caries in a rural, seven-county region in western Kentucky. This area is below state and national norms in education level of the population, income, and oral and general health. The partnership implemented a new prenatal care model that significantly reduced preterm and low birth-weight births for participating women, thus significantly improving the infants’ health while saving an estimated $2.3 million dollars in health care costs for acute care of premature infants in this population and enabling the expansion of dental outreach services for children in Hopkins county. [authors]