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Title: Segues to School-Based & Community-Based Dental Health Care

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Section/SPIG: Oral Health

Issue Date:

  

Arkansas’ Seal the State to bring oral health to schools

 

Arkansas is on track to meet its goal of providing free dental sealants to 2,000 schoolchildren by the end of the school year, and the effort is set to con­tinue in coming years.

 

After a pilot program in two elementary schools helped workers figure out the best ways to bring oral health into schools, the official Seal the State program kicked off in Novem­ber in Little Rock. The program is funded by a grant from the Daughters of Charity Foundation in St. Louis and is administered by the Arkansas Depart­ment of Health’s Office of Oral Health.

 

The Arkansas program, which now includes a partnership with the Arkansas Children’s Hospital to con­tinue the program beyond the 2008-2009 school year, can treat up to 88 children at a school in a single day. “And the beauty of a school-based clinic is that you don’t have to take kids out of school,” said Lynn Mouden, DDS, MPH, direc­tor of the state’s Office of Oral Health. “They may only be out of the class­room for 10 or 15 minutes, total.”

 

Dental sealants are such a powerful weapon against childhood tooth decay that the national Healthy Peo­ple 2010 goal is to have 50 percent of all schoolchild­ren receive at least one dental sealant. A 2003 survey of 7,100 Arkansas third-graders found 61 per­cent had tooth decay and only 15 percent had at least one dental sealant.

 

“First of all, it’s inexpensive, it’s easy, it’s painless,” Mouden said. “And the combination of dental sealants and water fluoridation can prevent virtually all childhood tooth decay. So that’s the kicker.

 

"Preventing tooth decay in childhood is a good investment now and for the future," he said. “Children with dental problems can’t eat, they can’t sleep, they can’t study, they can’t concentrate, they can’t go out and play without pain.” 

 

Part of the Seal the State campaign includes public outreach through print and radio ads that feature a “Super Tooth” touting the benefits of dental sealants. “A big piece of this is awareness for the parents because, let’s face it, a lot of parents don’t know to ask about dental sealants,” Mouden said.

 

The state’s Office of Oral Health has been working for several years to improve the oral health of the entire population, both through the Seal the State program and with other initiatives, such as a push to encour­age more students to pur­sue dental careers. In fact, a grant from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration is now funding oral health work force development in Arkansas.

 

One barrier, though, is that the state lacks a dental school. Mouden said a study found the state could benefit from such a school, and supporters are planning another study to show state lawmakers what it would take to bring such a school to Arkansas.

 

For more information on Arkansas’ oral health work, visit www.aroralhealth.com. 
           -- Donya Currie

 

Reprinted with permission from The Nation’s Health, April 2009.

            (official newspaper of APHA)

 

 

FIELD ACTION REPORT

 

ElderSmile: A Comprehensive Approach to Improving Oral Health for Seniors

Stephen Marshall, DDS, MPH, Mary E. Northridge, PhD, MPH, Leydis D. De La Cruz, Roger D. Vaughan, DrPH, Jarlath O'Neil-Dunne and Ira B. Lamster, DDS, MMSc

At the time of the writing of this article, Stephen Marshall, Leydis D. De La Cruz, and Ira B. Lamster were with the Columbia University College of Dental Medicine, New York, NY. Mary E. Northridge and Roger D. Vaughan were with the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York. Jarlath O'Neil-Dunne was with the Spatial Analysis Lab, University of Vermont, Burlington.

Correspondence: Requests for reprints should be sent to Stephen Marshall, DDS, MPH, Columbia University College of Dental Medicine, P&S Box 20, 650 W 168th St, New York, NY 10032 (e-mail: sm15@columbia.edu).

Societal changes, including the aging of the U.S. population and the lack of routine dental service coverage under Medicare, have left many seniors unable to afford any dental care whatsoever, let alone the most advanced treatments.1 In 2004, the Columbia University College of Dental Medicine and its partners instituted the ElderSmile program in the largely impoverished communities of Harlem and Washington Heights/Inwood in New York City. The long-term goal of this program is to improve access to and delivery of oral health care for seniors; the short-term goal is to establish and operate a network of prevention centers surrounding a limited number of treatment centers. Preliminary results indicate substantial unmet dental needs in this largely Hispanic and Black elderly population.

Key Findings
ElderSmile, a comprehensive, community-based program offering prevention, transportation, and treatment services for seniors in northern Manhattan for oral health care, has been successful in recruiting a range of partnering agencies and organizations at the local, state, and national levels.

Although the vast majority of senior participants (79.6 percent) had visited a medical doctor in the past year, fewer than half (47.5 percent) had visited a dentist in the past year, with cost cited as the most common reason (50.2 percent of seniors who had not visited a dentist in the past year).

To meet the challenge of providing oral health care to older adults with complex needs regardless of their ability to pay for services, innovative programs and improved reimbursement policies are critically important.

The ElderSmile program is an initiative of the Columbia University College of Dental Medicine (CDM) and its public and private partners, who provide both financial and in-kind support. Despite the influence of the surgeon general's report on oral health in providing economically disadvantaged children with needed consideration and subsequent dental services,8,9 economically disadvantaged seniors have received relatively little attention and almost no public health programs or public policy interventions directed toward improving their oral health.10The ElderSmile program for seniors was adapted from the successful DentCare program for children.9 Philanthropic organizations provided initial funding because they were convinced it addressed an important need.

(Abstract reprinted with Permission of the American Journal of Public Health)

[To obtain the original article, please visit www.ajph.org.]

 

April 2009, Vol 99, No. 4 | American Journal of Public Health 595-599
© 2009 American Public Health Association
DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2008.149211