Integrating Social Work Into Dentistry to Advance Equitable Oral Healthcare for Adults With Special Health Care Needs

Abstract

Background: Social workers in interprofessional dental teams play a critical role in making oral healthcare more equitable and accessible, especially for individuals with special health care needs (SHCN). Social workers are specifically trained to identify the connections between oral health, mental and physical well-being, socioeconomic status, history of trauma, and access to resources. Their work supports whole-person care and helps mitigate social determinants of health (SDoH) that produce systemic barriers to access to proper dental care. This narrative review explores four core domains that synthesize and highlight previous seminal research on the intersectional contribution of social workers to interprofessional dental teams.

Methods: Through a narrative review, we identified articles that discussed social work's role in supporting adults with SHCN in dentistry across the following four core domains: (1) addressing SDoH barriers, (2) mental health support, (3) care coordination, and (4) community engagement within dental settings.

Results: Across 34 peer-reviewed studies, the four core domains demonstrated the role of social workers in reducing barriers to care, supporting whole-person approaches, and improving patient communication. Ten gray literature sources further identified emerging trends, including trauma-informed care (TIC), legislative analyses, and ethical frameworks shaping practice.

Conclusions: This review highlights the multidimensional contributions of social work to dental settings across the domains of SDoH, mental health, care coordination, and community engagement. Evidence from peer-reviewed and gray literature indicates that integrating social work can reduce barriers to care, promote whole-person approaches, and inform emerging practices such as TIC. For individuals with SHCN, social work integration is particularly important in addressing heightened risks of unmet social and behavioral needs. These findings suggest that social work holds significant promise for advancing patient-centered, equitable dental care for special care populations.

Keywords: dental care; oral health; persons with disabilities; social determinants of health; social work; special care dentistry; special health care needs.