This month offers added opportunities to talk about the importance of starting children’s positive oral health habits early in life because February is National Children’s Dental Health Month. It’s critical that children learn early about the importance of oral health and its relationships to overall health because, unfortunately, poor oral health can lead to speech difficulties, low self-esteem and lifelong health challenges.
Here are four of the recommendations we make and share all during the year. Helping children to have a healthy smile for a lifetime is important to us because everyone deserves a healthy smile. Find more oral health information on nedelta.com/oral-health.
- Dental visits should begin early and continue. Children’sfirst dentist appointment should be scheduled before their first birthday. Children should have preventive teeth cleanings twice a year.
- Daily brushing and flossing are essential. Children should brush twice and floss once each day.
- Sealants save molars. Sealants are a protective coating applied to the grooves of molars to prevent cavities; and, when applied to new molars, sealants can reduce cavities by 70 percent!
- Kids flourish with fluoride. Dentists recommend two fluoride treatments a year and the use of fluoride toothpaste.
Untreated oral diseases are painful and costly. Tooth extractions are the most common reason for hospital admissions in children aged 6 to 10. On average, 34 million school hours are lost each year because of unplanned (emergency) dental care.
One of the ways we communicate the importance of positive oral health habits to children directly is through our oral health challenges in partnership with the New Hampshire Fisher Cats and the Portland Sea Dogs. Both programs reward children with game tickets for daily brushing and flossing.
The Northeast Delta Dental Foundation awarded 66 grants totaling over $974,600 during the past year to oral health programs in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, with those focusing on children’s oral health one of its giving priorities. For example, during the last year we awarded a grant of more than a quarter of a million dollars to The Traveling Tooth Fairies, a school-based cavity prevention program in the Nashua school system.
Recently, in my role as host of Northeast Delta Dental Radio, I had the privilege of interviewing Phia Scott, a fifth-grade student at Lancaster Elementary School, in Lancaster, New Hampshire. Phia is calling attention to the widespread need for increasing access to oral health care, an uncommon concern in a child of her age. She is particularly focused on the challenges in Northern New Hampshire, where the shortages of dental professionals are more prevalent than elsewhere in the state.
As one of the six finalists for the New Hampshire Kid Governor program, she became one of the six kid executive councilors meeting every other month to discuss the progress they’ve made in their platforms. Phia’s three-pronged plan to carry out her platform is:
- Conducting a dental drive at her school, church, and library to collect dental health products (toothbrushes, toothpaste and floss), which she will donate to the Lancaster NH Food Pantry.
- Posting photos, videos and educational material on oral health on a website.
- Talking with leaders about the importance of bringing mobile dental clinics to towns that don’t have any dentists available to them.
Here’s a link to a video of my conversation with Phia. Find more information on New Hampshire Kid Executive Council here.
Please join me in encouraging all of the grown-ups in our lives to be good examples of oral health habits for their children and grandchildren and teach them how to take care of their teeth and gums.
