The winner of the 2020 Award for Excellence in Program Innovation is The Gary and Mary West Senior Dental Center (SDC) in San Diego. The SDC was established in 2015 in response to a need for improved access to oral healthcare for older adults across the country. The program is embedded within a senior wellness center and Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE), providing low-income older adults with serious and complex oral healthcare needs in San Diego easy access to a dental home. The SDC uses an integrated care model to provide high-quality, affordable care, serving over 1,200 older adults with nearly 14,000 visits, to date.
The SDC’s program design is simple and based on removing major barriers to care—cost, location, and access—that currently exist for most low-income older adults. Located in places that older adults already frequent, the SDC’s overall goal is to create a sustainable model for holistic patient-centered care, to be shared or replicated in California and across the county.
The Archstone Foundation Award for Excellence in Program Innovation is an annual award, established in 1997 through an endowment, to recognize best practice models in the field of aging and public health. By providing national recognition to these programs, Archstone Foundation hopes that it will enable these model programs to be replicated, and to continue to be evaluated in an effort to enhance innovative services for older adults throughout the U.S.
