Featured Trainer: Mona Van Kanegan, DDS, MS

For more than 16 years, Mona Van Kanegan, DDS, MS has served the HIV community. As MATEC's dental director, Mona educates dental providers on relevant aspects of dental care for persons with HIV. In addition to providing direct patient care, Mona works with various community health centers to benefit at-risk populations with limited access to care. Mona also oversees programmatic activities that affect access and services, leads coalitions that work towards improving systems of care, and provides technical assistance to policy makers.

For Mona, oral care and prevention are fundamental to health maintenance, particularly for the HIV patient. "Gum disease, dental caries and other infections in the oral cavity are in large part preventable. Many people living with HIV are not aware of this fact and what they can do - individually - to prevent these painful and infective conditions. Oral diseases limit an individual's ability to work, learn, contribute to their community and add to rising health care costs. Oral diseases contribute to control and extent of chronic diseases such as poor nutrition, oral cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes.

At MATEC, Mona works with each of the seven local performance sites to develop and implement training opportunities to meet the particular needs of the providers. "I work with MATEC staff to understand their providers' training needs.

For example, one health center needs monthly support so we developed a monthly, web-based seminar where the clinicians present their cases and we discuss concepts unique to the case and solidify concepts from previous sessions. I like the sessions to be informal, discussion-based and engaging where possible."

Mona believes that as dental disease seems to be trending up, oral health practitioners can take a lead role in reversing this trend. Quality of life and long-term health care costs can be improved by preventing oral disease and the need for surgical intervention. "When our health care system is aligned to this tenant of truth, and when timely prevention and access to treatment is available, we will realize much improved quality of health for all."