Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) data as of March 31, 2025, indicated that over 59.7 million Americans lived in communities designated as a dental health HPSA (health professional shortage area).  A dental health HPSA is a population group, geographic area, or facility where access to dental care suffers from too few dentists serving the community relative to the size of its population.  As of 3/31/25, HRSA designated dental care shortfall areas in the five-state Great Lakes region totaled almost 7.3 million residents.  In order to remove that dental care shortfall designation, the HRSA estimates that HPSAs in the Great Lakes states would need 1,323 more dentists serving their communities.  A deeper look at HRSA data provides the following state-level summary view of the dental care shortfall in the Great Lakes region:

The Dental Care Shortfall in the Great Lakes Region

State	(1) HPSAs	(2) Population	(3) Shortfall
IL	227	2,134,589	408
IN	124	976,210	164
MI	242	1,582,942	297
OH	162	1,717,141	289
WI	161	867,585	165
Region	916	7,278,467	1,323
U.S.	7,054	59,718,174	10,143

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

(2) Population of designated HPSAs

(3) Dental Care practitioners needed to remove HPSA Designation

Source:  Designated HPSA Quarterly Summary, 3/31/25 (HRSA)