In the past year, the landscape for oral health took a dramatic step backward. Deep federal cuts to Medicaid jeopardized dental coverage for millions and several states banned community water fluoridation, while more than 72 million people already live without dental insurance and struggle to afford care.
Against this backdrop, the 2025 CareQuest Impact Report serves as both a call to action and a testament to resilience. The report brings together powerful stories, highlights community partners, and provides real-world examples of progress that aligns with our mission to make the oral health system more accessible, equitable, and integrated
Our goal was to create a compelling, multimedia-driven narrative that elevates the voices of communities, patients, providers, policymakers, educators, and advocates. By highlighting their experiences and achievements, the report demonstrates how CareQuest and our partners continue to drive meaningful, measurable change, even in the face of significant national setbacks.
We brought our project to life by reflecting on the year’s most meaningful achievements and the areas where our work — in partnership with communities and stakeholders — delivered the strongest impact. Our goal was to highlight the initiatives that not only advanced our mission but also demonstrated measurable progress in improving the oral health system. To determine these priorities, we reviewed the outcomes of our advocacy, grantmaking, research, and innovative efforts. By elevating those results, we ensured our report focused on the areas where CareQuest and our partners made the most progress — and where our work is helping drive systemic change nationwide.
One of our primary challenges was overcoming the perception that an impact report is primarily organizational self-promotion. For audiences outside the organization — especially partners, grantees, and practitioners — impact reports can sometimes feel disconnected from their daily work. We needed to ensure the content felt relevant, inclusive, and reflective of the broader community’s contributions.
To address this challenge, we intentionally centered the voices and achievements of our partners and grantees in our communications:
• In promotional efforts, we highlighted the “Grantee Spotlights” featured in the report — compelling, human-centered stories that showcased how community organizations, with CareQuest Institute’s support, made a tangible difference in improving oral health. These posts helped audiences see themselves in the work and demonstrated that the report was as much about their success as ours.
• In announcing the Impact Report, we expressed gratitude to our partners and grantees for their collaboration, highlighting how their efforts shaped the work. By acknowledging their influence, we fostered a sense of ownership and connection, encouraging deeper engagement with the full report.
Through this approach, we ensured that the Impact Report was not just a reflection of our organizational progress, but a celebration of the collective impact made possible by the people and partners we work alongside every day.
The 2025 Impact Report demonstrated the progress CareQuest Institute made, in partnership with grantees, advocates, and collaborators, to improve the oral health system during the past year.
Our efforts were successful based on both qualitative feedback and quantitative performance metrics, showing the report resonated with oral health audiences and exceeded performance benchmarks.
Our Board’s and executive leadership team’s feedback acknowledged the clarity, strategic alignment, and storytelling strength of the report, noting it as “incredible” and commending the team for its high-quality execution. This confirmed the report effectively represented the organization’s mission, values, and accomplishments.
We analyzed engagement within our newsletter — one of our most reliable indicators of audience interest. The 2025 Impact Report received more than four times the number of clicks than the 2024 report, demonstrating a significant increase in engagement and signaling the content resonated strongly with our core audience.
Across our social media platforms, the posts performed exceptionally well on Instagram and LinkedIn, achieving engagement rates (11.21% and 6.21%), well above typical nonprofit and industry benchmarks. For context, our average across all platforms in 2025 was 4.35%. These results indicate the visual storytelling and partner-focused messaging connected effectively with our audience.
And, the report on our website had 1,366 views within the first three weeks of its launch — making it one of the most-visited pages on our website in that period.