Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) data as of December 31, 2022, indicated that over 69.7 million Americans lived in communities or settings designated as a dental health HPSA (health professional shortage area).  A dental health HPSA is a population group, geographic area, or facility with substandard dental care access because too few dentists serve the community relative to its population size.  HPSAs in the five-state Great Lakes region had over 9.3 million residents living in dental care shortage settings, accounting for about 13.3% of the U.S. population who lived in dental care HPSAs.  The HRSA estimates that HPSAs in the Great Lakes states would need 1,688 more dentists to eliminate the dental care shortage in the region.  This deficit represented just under 14.2% of the nation's shortage of dentists.  A deeper look at HRSA data provides the following state-level summary view of the Great Lakes region's dental care shortage:

The Great Lakes Region's Dental Care Shortage

State	(1) HPSAs	(2) Population	(3) Shortage
IL	247	2,818,438	503
IN	115	1,298,280	224
MI	248	1,563,157	300
OH	175	2,018,103	385
WI	183	1,603,636	276
Region	968	9,301,614	1,688
U.S.	7,313	69,766,605	11,909
% of U.S.	13.2%	13.3%	14.2%

(1) Designated Geographic, Population Group, and Facility HPSAs with a dental care shortage

(2) Population of designated HPSAs

(3) Dental Care practitioners needed to remove HPSA Designation

Source:  Designated HPSA Quarterly Summary, 12/31/22 (HRSA)