Fall season dental screenings for kids
Esther Yepez and Maryjane Puffer at 116th Street Elementary School providing oral health education.
Throughout the month of October, The L.A. Trust partnered with Big Smiles Dental to increase the number of dental screening consent forms collected from 22 LAUSD elementary schools (grades K-5). The L.A. Trust is currently working with LAUSD to phase out the consent forms. However, the forms are still being used today.
The L.A. Trust oral health team served as “boots on the ground,” in a two-step process. First, they visited all 22 schools classroom by classroom to provide oral health education. Billy and friends good oral health puppets, led demonstrations on how to brush properly and played interactive games where the students learned about healthy and not-so-healthy snacks to avoid cavities. At the end of the screenings, students received a wrist band that reminded their parents to return the consent forms for their dental screenings which were scheduled to take place on school premises two weeks after the oral health presentations.
For the second step, The L.A. Trust team returned to the 22 school sites with Billy the puppet and friends to do a short 10- minute presentation for the students as they waited their turn to see the dentist. The presentation consisted of a short Sesame Street video that talked about oral health and another video called “No More Nasties,” which talked about brushing and flossing. The dental screenings are free of charge for students, as are the dental services provided to them. Anything the child needs that day can be serviced if the parents fill out the consent form and opt for any of the services provided.
Jasmine Cisneros at South Park Elementary School.
Tooth decay is the most common chronic disease of childhood, and yet it is also the most preventable. Early and consistent oral health care is critical to preventing dental caries (tooth decay) in children. The American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry (AAPD) recommends that children visit the dentist at the time of first tooth eruption and no later than at one year old and every six months after that. Unfortunately, this need for oral health care often goes unmet, leaving our youth vulnerable to advancing decay. Barriers to accessing oral health care include a lack of awareness about the importance of routine oral health care; lack of dental insurance; and a shortage of oral health providers to treat low-income children in their communities.
The L.A. Trust Oral Health Initiative
Since 2012 The L.A. Trust’s Oral Health Initiative has been forging partnerships with providers and partners to bring free oral health education, screenings and referrals to children who lack dental care. We work with Los Angeles Unified and providers to facilitate screenings and education for more than 1,700 kindergartners and third graders. The L.A. Trust also supports the broader community by convening public health officials and private dental providers through our Oral Health Advisory Board meetings. During the lockdown period of COVID-19, The L.A. Trust also launched Operation Tooth Fairy, raising oral health awareness and distributing more than 50,000 toothbrushes.