The Central Massachusetts Oral Health Initiative (CMOHI): a successful public-private community health collaboration.

Objectives: The Central Massachusetts Oral Health Initiative (CMOHI) aimed to improve access to quality oral health care in central Massachusetts.

Methods: A broad-based public and private organization partnership with local and national funding created a steering committee to organize school administrators, community leaders, and a medical school to collaborate on five goals: advocate for changes in oral health policy, increase oral health care access, provide school-based dental services for underserved children, establish a Dental General Practice Residency, and educate medical professionals about oral health.

Results: A state legislative Oral Health Caucus helped secure sought-after policy improvements; more regional dentists now accept Medicaid; community health center capacity to provide dental services was expanded; school-based programs were designed and delivered needed dental services; a dental residency was created; and methods of educating medical professionals were established.

Tapping youth as agents for change: evaluation of a peer leadership HIV/AIDS intervention.

Purpose: To evaluate the impact of a community-based HIV/AIDS peer leadership prevention program on newly enrolled peer leaders and youth enrolled as peer educators for one or more years (repeat peer leaders).

Methods: Quasi-experimental nonrandomized design with two intervention groups (newly enrolled and repeat peer leaders) and one comparison group. The sample consisted of 235 adolescents, 164 peer leaders, and 71 comparison youth, drawn from nine communities in Massachusetts.

Applying control charts to quality improvement.

This article reviews the definitions and principles that should guide the use of control charts in healthcare quality. Several examples from the literature are used to illustrate significant problems and issues in control chart construction.

A comparison of three measures of disease progression in ALS.

Effective clinical trials in neuromuscular research require accurate and sensitive methods to quantitate disease progression. The purpose of this study was to concurrently compare manual muscle testing (MMT), maximal voluntary isometric contraction (MVIC), and a functional scale (the ALS Score). Twenty patients with ALS were tested ten times at monthly intervals using each of the three methods.