OHNEP equips nurses and interprofessional care teams to integrate oral health into education and everyday practice, strengthening the connection between oral health and whole-person care.

About the Program

The Oral Health Nursing Education and Practice (OHNEP) Program is a national initiative advancing nursing’s role in oral health across academic and clinical settings.

Through faculty and preceptor development, curriculum integration, and practical clinical resources, OHNEP helps educators and healthcare professionals make oral health part of routine care. Its open-access Resource Hub shares tools and best practices with nursing and interprofessional colleagues nationally and globally.

Who It Serves

OHNEP aims to build oral health knowledge and competencies across the nation’s 4.5 million nurses, beginning with undergraduate and graduate nursing education and extending into clinical practice.

Its work supports oral health integration in primary care, acute care, schools, long-term care, and community settings.

Organization: Oral Health Nursing Education and Practice Program
Sector: Workforce
Geography: National and global
Status: Established initiative operating at scale

The Gap It Addresses

Oral health is often left out of routine health assessments and care plans. OHNEP addresses this gap by helping nurses and other healthcare professionals incorporate oral health into education, assessment, prevention, and care coordination.

The program promotes oral health literacy, equity, and collaboration across professions, providing resources that translate oral health integration into everyday practice.

How the Approach Works

OHNEP supports integration through:

• Education and training: Developing faculty and preceptors and embedding oral health content and competencies into nursing curricula.
• Clinical assessment: Promoting the HEENOT approach, which adds oral health to the traditional head, eyes, ears, nose, and throat assessment.
• Care planning: Incorporating oral health risk factors, patient education, behavior and lifestyle change, medication management, and follow-through on referrals.
• Shared resources: Providing open-access tools and best practices through the OHNEP Resource Hub.
• Interprofessional collaboration: Connecting nursing with other professions to advance coordinated, whole-person care.

Clinical nurse leaders are applying these approaches across areas including hospital-acquired and ventilator-associated pneumonia, stroke, diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease, pregnancy, and pediatric care.

Evidence and Publications

The submission includes publications documenting OHNEP’s ten-year outcomes, oral health curriculum integration, the HEENOT assessment approach, and interprofessional education and care models.

Together, these publications provide a foundation for the program’s work in nursing education and clinical practice.

Current Status

OHNEP is an established initiative operating at scale. It continues to develop nursing oral health champions nationwide and collaborate with interprofessional colleagues and organizations to advance a national oral health integration agenda.

Supporting Research

• Haber & Cipollina (2024). Oral Health Nursing Education and Practice Program: Ten-Year Outcomes. View publication
• Haber et al. (2015). Putting the mouth back in the head: HEENT to HEENOT. American Journal of Public Health. View publication
• Dolce et al. (2018). Integrating oral health curricula into nurse practitioner graduate programs: Results of a US survey. Journal of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners. View publication
• Dolce (2014). Integrating oral health into professional nursing practice: An interprofessional faculty tool kit. Journal of Professional Nursing. View publication
• George et al. (2018). Evaluation of a midwifery initiated oral health-dental service program to improve oral health and birth outcomes for pregnant women: A multi-centre randomised controlled trial. International Journal of Nursing Studies. View publication
• Greenberg et al. (2020). Senior oral health: A community-based interprofessional educational experience for nursing and dental students. Journal of Gerontological Nursing. View publication
• Haber et al. (2019). Integrating oral health curricula into midwifery graduate programs: Results of a US survey. Journal of Midwifery & Women’s Health. View publication

Learn More

Explore the OHNEP Resource Hub for open-access educational tools and clinical resources.