Treatment of correctional center inmates at a public health department: a cooperative venture.

Minimum security correctional institutions in North Carolina are small units with no in-house dental facilities. Dental care for inmates of these institutions traditionally has been provided at larger correctional institutions each of which is responsible for the dental treatment of inmates of many smaller units. Services provided are therefore necessarily limited. This paper describes and evaluates an innovative program designed to provide high quality, cost-effective dental care for minimum security correctional center inmates at a nearby county health department clinic. The program is a cooperative effort sponsored by the North Carolina Department of Corrections, the University of North Carolina School of Dentistry, and the Orange County (N.C.) Health Department and is funded in part by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.