Not even an afternoon thunderstorm could dampen the mood at Pikes Peak State College’s Rampart Range campus.

Even as the rain rolled into Colorado Springs Tuesday afternoon, spirits were high as representatives and attendees huddled into the new Delta Dental Oral Health Career Center for its ceremonial ribbon cutting.

The crowd’s sense of optimism comes as the newly renovated facility will hopefully increase the number of needed dental hygienists and dental assistants in the region and state.

“This is a crucial step to addressing the workforce shortages and promoting diversity across our healthcare community,” the foundation’s Chief Operating Officer Kelli Clifton Ogunsanya said.

As its name suggests, the latest addition to the Pikes Peak State College was made possible predominately by a $2.5 million grant from the Delta Dental of Colorado Foundation. The donation is the largest given out by the foundation and the largest the school has received.

It is also part of a series of recent grants dedicated to expanding and diversifying dental hygiene programs across Colorado.

“Colorado ranks 48th in the nation for dental training facilities, resulting in a critically high demand for these professionals,” said Adam Cermak, executive director of the Foundation for Colorado Community Colleges.

“This is especially true for El Paso County which, until now, has had no dental hygiene school. Dentists, for years, have been asking for this program.”

A former child care center, the renovated facility currently houses PPSC’s dental assistant program and, starting in Fall 2025, will be home to a brand-new dental hygiene program.

Attendees at the event explored the facility and observed its two clinics with 20 patient chairs, sterilization room and 13 simulation stations for low-risk and high-impact learning. The program will also incorporate advanced dental technology into the curriculum like 3D imaging and same-day crown design and production.

PPSC President Lance Bolton said that the university received accreditation for the new program last month and can now begin the process of enrolling students.

He noted that the accreditation process included visits from multiple colleges across the country with their own respective programs to help them develop their own.

The final result is a state-of-the-art facility has been touted as among the best in the country.

“They got back to me and said, ‘we don’t have a single recommendation,’” Bolton said.

Dental Deserts

According to the Colorado Dental Hygienists Association, there are currently only five college programs for dental hygiene in the state: Colorado Northwestern Community College, Pueblo Community College, Colorado Mountain College, Community College of Denver and Concorde Career College.

For the Pikes Peak region and its near-one million population size, this means that those seeking a degree in dental hygiene would have to travel north to Denver or Aurora, south to Pueblo or northwest to either Rangely or Edwards.

Seeing this and other gaps across the state, Front Range Community College, Community College of Denver and Colorado Mountain College also received grant funding from the Delta Dental of Colorado Foundation, totaling nearly $5 million to develop or expand their respective dental hygiene programs.

The massive wave of donations come as the industry recovers from a fallout of licensed professionals in the wake of the COVID-19. The American Dental Association reported an overall decline in hygienist jobs since following the pandemic, with an 11% decrease in dental practice capacity across Colorado.

The Colorado Dental Association’s Executive Director Molly Pereira said, like with many industries, the pandemic led to early retirements while increasingly high costs of education exacerbated the incoming workforce.

As it pertains to Colorado, she added the overall high cost of living in recent years has also made it difficult to fill positions from out-of-state.

“We can’t blame everything on one factor, because it’s a ripple effect,” she said.

This dearth in workers has rippled to the quality and access to care with dental offices taking less patients and rescheduled appointments taking longer.

“I don’t have to tell you that, when you miss a dental appointment, you’re looking at about three months out before you can get back in again,” Bolton said. “That’s what I’ve heard more than anything when I tell people about this new program.”

‘Not an overnight fix’

Bolton said that the university was a good fit for this expansion, due to their existing dental assisting program, the community’s diverse population and the amount of interest from students to continue on to a dental hygienist program.

To kickstart the career paths for aspiring local students, roughly one third of each incoming class will come from the school’s existing dental assistance program. The dental hygiene program looks to enroll over 30 students and the expanded dental assisting program 30 students each year.

The program also looks to increase dental care access to its local communities as part of its curriculum. 15-week low-income clinics will offer hygiene services in the fall and spring, with a 15-week general-services clinic in the spring. Services will also be provided for 10 weeks during the summer semester.

Once operational, the dental hygiene program will serve around 200 patients per week, with fees ranging from $0 to $75. All clinics will be operated under the supervision of a licensed dentist.

Other initiatives to address this workforce shortage have included the state-funded Care Forward Colorado Program to provides a free education to students interested in becoming certified dental assistants along with other positions in the medical field.

During this year’s legislative session, lawmakers passed the Dentist and Dental Hygienist Compact into law which saw Colorado join a pact of seven other states to provide opportunities to practice in the other states while increasing mobility, improving public safety and reducing licensure burdens.

Pereira said that the solution to this workforce shortage is “not an overnight fix” given the time it takes to become completely certified, but the recent steps taken are encouraging.

“They are really doing a lot here to expand either with new these new programs or expanding the student population,” she said. “So, with all that being the case, we really expect the population to double, or even triple, by 2028.”