Federal Government Grants for Dental Care

Dental health is a major concern for many Americans today. Most private health insurance policies these days do not include dental care in their overall programs. That forces the insured to purchase a separate policy with, at times, very limited coverage. Anyone who has purchased a dental care policy will likely tell you that any major procedures required still carry a hefty out-of-pocket expense. Unfortunately, any federal assistance for dental care is mainly limited to state-run programs for the homeless and veterans. While the federal government does not offer grants to individuals for dental care, they do offer grants for training, equipment and facility construction to qualified organizations.

Training: Administrative Academic Units

• Federal grants are available for dental training facilities.

  The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) offers grants for academic and administrative entities that include state and county governments as well as accredited institutions of learning. These grants are issued for use in providing training for persons interested in entering the dental health field in areas of physician assistant training, general and pediatric dental training and faculty development training.

EETHP Equipment Initiative

• The EETHP grant allows for procurement of training equipment.

  The Equipment to Enhance Training of Health Professionals (EETHP) grant is a program designed to provide additional equipment needed for the updating and/or furthering education of individuals in residency training. The grantee must provide documentation regarding the necessity of equipment relevant to current training needs as well as an itemized budgetary analysis of the procurement of the needed equipment.

State Support of an Oral Health Workforce

• State funding grants are offered by the HRSA to help improve areas that have shortages of dental health providers. States receiving this grant must also provide at least 40 percent of the total cost of the project. This additional funding shall not be from federal origins but may be obtained from other state, community or local resources.