Substance Abuse and Mental Health Issues Within the Homeless African American Community

Dental health care is a practice that would cause behavior change amongst the substance abusers and mentally ill homeless Blacks. According to Comassetto et al. (2021), homeless people have increased cases of dental health problems. The individuals may have available health checkup services but rarely go for a dental check. Providing dental health care inform of dental checkups, treatment for various issues and oral hygiene tools would turn around the health statuses of the homeless people.

Black Americans highly suffer from dental illnesses like caries, periodontal diseases, and gingivitis. According to Behar-Horenstein et al. (2017), the population dental issues are caused by dental care disparities. The homeless blacks experience dental health issues but are not likely to seek help. Therefore, helping these individuals to practice good health hygiene would bring change to their unhealthy lives. Dental issues treatment amongst the homeless would be great but providing the group with toothbrushes and toothpaste would even be better. Substance abusers and mentally ill people do not prioritize dental care hence facilitating a way to care for their teeth would not only help prevent dental problems but also heal existing dental problems.

Comparing the number of dental issues before the intervention and after would be the best way to assess the implementation. After providing the homeless individuals with dental care tools, the results would be expected after at least one month (Mejia-Lancheros et al., 2020). In the initiation of practice, the number of people offered the dental care tools would be recorded. Furthermore, the number of individuals with dental health issues would be recorded and compared with the new number the same after one month of practice. At the end of the evaluation, the number of dental care issues would decrease compared to the initial cases.

References

Behar-Horenstein, L. S., Warren, R. C., Dodd, V. J., & Catalanotto, F. A. (2017). Addressing oral health disparities via educational foci on cultural competence. American Journal of Public Health, 107(1), pp.18-23.

Comassetto, M. O., Hugo, F. N., Neves, M., & Hilgert, J. B. (2021). Dental pain in homeless adults in Porto Alegre, Brazil. International Dental Journal. 1, pp. 1-8.

Mejia-Lancheros, C., Lachaud, J., Nisenbaum, R., Wang, A., Stergiopoulos, V., Hwang, S. W., & O’Campo, P. (2020). Dental problems and chronic diseases in mentally ill homeless adults: A cross-sectional study. BMC Public Health, 20, pp. 1-13.