The W.K. Kellogg Foundation has – directly or indirectly – given millions to Community Catalyst, the Children’s Alliance, the Statewide Poverty Action Network, and similar groups across the country. These groups weigh in on health care policies in our state, including access to dental care. But we believe they are being manipulated to do the bidding of donors whose profits come from foods with added sugars that play a large part in creating the oral health problems in our state.

Kellogg-funded advocates aggressively push a new form of dental provider, a dental therapist, and publicly denigrate both dentists and any dental policy solutions that do not include dental therapy.

There are many problems with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s dental therapist idea, but here are four of the biggest:

1.

Patient safety concerns

Dentists and other professionals have raised patient safety concerns with the dental therapy model, because it allows dental therapists to perform irreversible surgical procedures with only a fraction of the training of a licensed dentist.

2.

Kellogg’s solutions have not improved access to care

Despite millions in sugar cereal profits being spent to promote dental therapy, dental therapy programs in the U.S. have failed to significantly improve access to care, rates of decay, or cost of care for patients.

3.

Creates two tiers of care

The dental therapy model would create a two-tier health care system with lesser-trained practitioners serving primarily low-income patients.

4.

Stalls progress on real solutions

By pushing a dental therapy-or-nothing strategy, advocates funded by sugar cereal profits stall meaningful progress in improving dental access. Time spent pushing dental therapy over the last decade could have been spent on addressing the state’s severe dental hygiene and assistant workforce shortages and investing to improve the state’s dental safety net. While progress has stalled, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation has continued to profit from sugary cereal sales that exacerbate the problem.