Bright-spots, pressing issues, and goals moving forward for oral health in North Carolina were on full display during Oral Health Day on June 21, 2023. The theme for this year’s event was, “Challenges and Opportunities for the Dental Team.” Keynote speaker Kathy...

For years, Medicaid Expansion in North Carolina has been health advocates’ proverbial white whale. When it comes to policy changes that could dramatically improve access and equity in health care across the board, Medicaid Expansion would be a huge step in a positive...

Goodbye 2022, hello 2023! What a year… From a loooooong midterm election season to the World Cup, inflation, the war in Ukraine, the continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic, and so much more, there has been a lot on our minds. So much so that it is difficult at times to...

Daniel E. Dawes began his 2020 book, “The Political Determinants of Health,” with a story about a farmer looking for land to plant an orchard. He finds a plot of land split into three sections: one with rocky soil, one with poor soil, and one with rich soil. In the...

There are stories about “midnight raids” in the 1960s depicting disability rights advocates in Berkeley, CA, smashing and re-paving curbs so they would slope down to meet the street at intersections, allowing people in wheelchairs to cross. These stories aren’t...

“It just kept happening, over and over and over again. Patients of record, patients I’d known for years. Either they come in complaining about something or I see something. All of the classic oral manifestations of HIV disease, there they were.” Dr. Lewis Lampiris is...

It’s no secret that there is an oral health care access gap for North Carolinians with Medicaid insurance. It’s practically a rule of thumb that if you are born poor, you will have less access to health care services (medical and dental), and in turn will likely end...

On April 8, 2002, Ray Krone was released from prison after serving 10 years for a murder he did not commit. A decade earlier, a woman’s body was found at the bar Krone frequented. Officers identified Krone as a person of interest, and they took a Styrofoam impression...