CostaPapadopoulos, CHE,MHA, isCDA’s principal healthpolicy advisor. Oral HealthWorkforce inCanada: TheDataDesert is Shrinking CDA’s long-time health care policy and data expert explains why it is so hard to understand or plan for the oral health workforce in Canada. The aging population, the retirement of the baby boomer generation, the COVID-19 pandemic, and increased public funding for dental care are all factors fueling an increased demand for oral health care in Canada. A dynamic and robust oral health care workforce is required to meet the needs of a growing and demographically complex population. “Planning ahead to make sure that we have enough health care workers in each sector is an important and challenging process,” says Costa Papadopoulos, who engages in health policy, data, and information at CDA. “It’s become clear to those of us in dentistry, and many in the federal government, that we need to make sure we have a strong workforce in oral health. Over the past two decades, I’ve been part of many efforts to gather data for workforce planning, not just for oral health care but health care in general. Although we’ve made some progress, we keep running into the same obstacles.” The 2000s In 2003, Human Resources Skills Development Canada, a branch of the federal government, undertook projects in a variety of health care sectors to study the supply and demand of health care workers. A coalition of dentists, dental hygienists, dental assistants, denturists, dental therapists and dental technologists put together a proposal for a three-year study of the oral health workforce, which the federal government funded, thus creating the Oral Health Care Sector Study Organization (OHCSSO). The board of the new organization was comprised of leaders from CDA, the Canadian Dental Hygienists Association (CDHA), the Canadian Dental Assistants’ Association (CDAA) and the other national organizations. There was also representation from provincial associations, regulatory and examining organizations as well as academia. Papadopoulos administrated the OHCSSO and held monthly in-person meetings of representatives from across the country. 30 | 2024 | Issue 5
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