Children’s Dental Health Experts

The Pew Center on the States features professionals with extensive expertise in dental health policy at the state and national levels. Pew’s experts are available to discuss a variety of topics related to Pew’s work on children’s dental health including: Medicaid, dental workforce, prevention and treatment of dental diseases, trends in access to care among at-risk children and young adults, and data collection. 

Shelly Gehshan is the director of the Pew Children’s Dental Campaign. She leads efforts to work with states to expand access to prevention and treatment for children through policy changes in Medicaid, sealant programs, community water fluoridation and workforce. Read More

Areas of expertise: Medicaid and health care reform, state health policy and dental programs for children

Dr. William Maas serves in the role of advisor to the Pew Children’s Dental Campaign. Read More

Areas of expertise: oral health, state and community dental public health programs, treatment and prevention of dental diseases and data and surveillance

Laurie Norris is the state campaign manager for the Pew Children's Dental Campaign. Read More 

Areas of expertise: Medicaid, advocacy and state policy change

Andy Snyder is a senior associate with the Pew Children’s Dental Campaign. Read More

Areas of expertise: state dental health programs, Medicaid health care reform, data analysis and dental health policy

Members of the media interested in talking with an expert may contact Matt Jacob at 202.540.6310.  

Shelly Gehshan

Shelly Gehshan is the director of the Pew Children’s Dental Campaign. Prior to joining Pew, she spent nearly 20 years working for state policy makers on a range of issues affecting low-income women and children, such as oral health, behavioral health, reproductive health, service delivery and health care financing through Medicaid and SCHIP.  From 2005 to 2008, Shelly served as a senior program director at the National Academy for State Health Policy (NASHP) in Washington, D.C. She developed NASHP’s extensive portfolio of work in the area of oral health and directed projects on health care reform, Medicaid, behavioral health and juvenile justice. Before joining NASHP, Shelly spent nine years as a program director for the National Conference of State Legislatures. At NCSL, she served as managing director and senior policy analyst for the Forum for State Health Policy Leadership, which provides training, policy analyses and technical assistance for legislators and legislative staff. Shelly spent six years as deputy director of the Southern Governors’ Association’s Infant Mortality Project, where she worked with governors and state legislators to expand access to prenatal care for low-income women. Shelly has also served as the vice-chair of the board of directors for the Children’s Dental Health Project. She has a master’s degree in public policy from the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley.

William Maas

Dr. Bill Maas serves in the role of advisor to the Pew Children’s Dental Campaign. Many aspects of the campaign build upon evidence-based recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).  Bill recently retired from CDC, where he was director of the Division of Oral Health, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.  The division extends the use of proven strategies to prevent oral diseases, assists state and community dental public health programs and conducts surveillance of oral diseases. Before coming to CDC in 1998, Bill served in a variety of clinical, managerial, research, and policy assignments in the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS). In these roles, he helped identify oral health data needs of PHS agencies, provided input on the development of national oral health surveys, and contributed to the development and dissemination of scientific, policy-relevant information for patients, clinicians, purchasers and policymakers. From 1997-2001, Bill was the chief dental officer of the PHS and held the rank of assistant surgeon general, where he was a member of the project team that prepared the first-ever surgeon general’s report on oral health in America. Bill is a graduate of The University of Michigan School of Dentistry, and earned master of public health and master of science in health policy and management degrees at Harvard University. He is board-certified in Dental Public Health, has served in the House of Delegates of the American Dental Association, and is a past-president of the American Association of Public Health Dentistry.

Laurie Norris

Laurie Norris is the state campaign manager for the Pew Children's Dental Campaign.  Prior to joining Pew, Laurie was with the Public Justice Center in Baltimore where she served as director of the Health Rights Project and the Homeless and Foster Children's Education Project.  Laurie was instrumental in helping to raise national awareness about the critical need for better access to dental care for poor children by securing media attention about her client, 12-year-old Deamonte Driver, who died in 2007 as a result of a preventable dental abscess that spread to his brain. She helped turn this tragedy into tangible improvements for Maryland’s children through her leadership on Maryland’s Dental Action Committee. Their work led to significant increases in state funding for children’s dental care and the expansion of the dental safety net. Laurie also worked on the West Coast with the Health Rights Hotline pilot project and as a staff attorney in Chico, California, where she served as lead counsel on two successful class action lawsuits and handled individual and impact cases in public benefits, consumer rights, child support and elder law. Laurie holds a master’s degree in regional science and urban planning from the University of Pennsylvania and a juris doctor degree from New York University School of Law.

Andy Snyder

Andy Snyder is a senior associate with the Pew Children’s Dental Campaign. Andy has previously held positions with the National Academy for State Health Policy, where his work focused on coverage and benefit design in public programs, and with the Wisconsin Medicaid program, where he was the policy analyst for the state’s dental benefit. He has staffed a Wisconsin Governor’s Task Force on Access to Oral Health Care, and has authored publications with groups such as the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured on Medicaid dental policy, dental reimbursement and how states can fit dental care into their health care reform plans. He holds a master’s degree in public affairs from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

 

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Help Wanted: A Policy Maker’s Guide to New Dental Providers

The Pew Center on the States and the National Academy for State Health Policy, with support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, conducted a comprehensive literature review and interviews with leading experts in several states to learn about existing proposals for new dental providers.  The report explores three provider types—dental therapists, community dental health coordinators and advanced dental hygiene practitioners — along with steps that state policy makers can consider to develop these new providers in their states. A companion brief is also available.

Learn More