Re-Establishing the NADP Foundation

By Mike Adelberg, NADP Executive Director

For nearly thirty years, NADP has maintained an affiliated foundation. However, for most of that time, the NADP Foundation has been dormant. Two years ago, while interviewing for NADP Executive Director position, I spoke with enthusiasm about reviving the NADP Foundation. Now, after a year of patient preparation—and generous financial support from four NADP members (Delta Dental of Massachusetts, Met Life, Sun Life, and Principal)—I am thrilled to announce the re-establishment of the NADP Foundation.

The NADP Foundation is being led by a seven-person Board of Directors chaired by Brad Peak of Sun Life with other members coming from the dental benefits industry and academia. The Board is guided by this mission statement:

The mission of The NADP Foundation is to promote research and education to improve the oral health of the population through access to and the administration of oral health services.

I have the great honor serving the Foundation and its Board as Foundation President.

NADP estimates that 293 million Americans have dental coverage (as of 2022). This is a large number, and yet the dentally uninsured rate is roughly double the medically uninsured rate in the U.S. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services, dental claims are close to $100 billion a year (more than two-thirds paid through commercial insurance). The NADP Foundation will dedicate itself to increasing the number of covered Americans and the efficiency of dental care provided to those people. It will do so by funding a small number of carefully selected research and education projects.

The NADP Foundation will serve the critical role of sparking research and education initiatives focused on improving access to oral health and dental benefits and improving the effectiveness of oral health services and coverage.  In so doing, the Foundation serves a role that no other Foundation is fully addressing. Having said that, the NADP Foundation is eager to work with other Foundations, research entities, and philanthropies on projects of common interest.

The Foundation is also particularly interested in partnering with dental schools and other entities to help new dentists learn about dental benefits and how to work successfully with dental insurance. We are rightly impressed by the rigor and quality of the dental school curricula but will look for ways to augment that training by helping dental students learn the fundamentals of dental benefits and dental insurance operations. We are similarly interested in ways to better support the dental office managers and billing staff who help dentists successfully interact with dental plans.

In the coming days, the NADP Foundation will release a Request for Proposal (RFP) calling for proposals that further the NADP’s Foundation mission. In our inaugural year, our funding and scope are modest, and we will likely only fund two or three projects. But all great journeys begin with a first step.

Stay tuned. I look forward to telling you more about the NADP Foundation in future blogs.

Learn more about the foundation at nadp.org/foundation.