Lunch Box oral health education program expands to kids with vision impairment

You may know that our mission is to improve the oral health of all, and starting with young children and health literacy is a great step forward.

Before this school year started, we supported efforts by The Children's Oral Health Institute to grow their national Lessons In A Lunch Box: Healthy Teeth Essentials & Facts About Snacks® program. This expansion enables the program to reach children who have impaired or loss of vision. Everyone needs to care for their mouths in order to have healthy futures, and Lunch Box is ensuring all kids have this chance.

In February, special lunchboxes - now with braille - will be delivered to participating schools along with a volunteer presentation to run the program.

So what is this educational program about healthy teeth and why does it matter? 

The Children's Oral Health Institute, a nonprofit based in Maryland, outlines it clearly:

• Lessons In A Lunch Box: Healthy Teeth Essentials & Facts About Snacks is an educational oral health literacy program developed around a lunch box designed exclusively to teach elementary school children. The lunch box includes a color coordinated carrot case with a rinse cup top designed to store a toothbrush, toothpaste, and dental floss.
• The program is created to help children to begin learning early, throughout grade school, about taking care of their teeth, making good diet choices and careers in dentistry.
• The Children’s Oral Health Institute believes the program and the exclusive lesson guides, including the Code Red: The Oral Health Crisis In Your Classroom booklet, will encourage teachers to incorporate oral health education as a part of classroom instruction.
• The program model is presented is to elementary schools with support from organized dentistry, local dental school faculty, their students and community volunteers. It is important that dentist examine and provide treatment for underserved children.
• Exposing dental students to programs like Lessons In A Lunch Box may help to improve the access to the oral health care challenges we face throughout the country.
• Further, the profession of dental medicine is facing a workforce shortage. According to the 2000 Surgeon General’s Report, by 2020 there will be one dentist for every 100,000 Americans. The program places emphasis on encouraging children to begin considering the dental profession as a career option. 
• The ideal times during the school year to introduce the Lessons In A Lunch Box program are:
• October, National Dental Hygiene Month. This is a good time of the school year to present the program because it allows the teacher approximately 8 school months to refer to the visual and practical lessons offered by lunch box.
• February, National Children’s Dental Health Month (NCDHM). This is another great time because much of the dental community looks forward to participating in initiatives that highlight and support the annual observance of NCDHM when dental and medical professionals focus on efforts to improve the oral health of children.
• Give Kids A Smile® (GKAS) Day. Usually celebrated throughout the country in late January or early February, GKAS is the annual centerpiece NCDHM.
• The cafeteria has proven to be the best location in the school to present the program. Students can comfortably have their lunch box open in front of them while listening to the presenter explain all of the fun and exciting educational features of the delightful container. They learn about the following:
• flossing, brushing and fluoride
• healthy dietary choices and good eating habits
• careers in dentistry

Did you learn anything new here? By partnering and supporting this expansion, we learned a lot about the vision impaired community and successful ways to help all children develop important oral health habits.

National Minority Health Month: A Thank You to Community Health Promoters

During National Minority Health Month, we’re calling attention to barriers many people must overcome to enjoy their best health, and the advocates who help them. 

One of our jobs as a leading health care organization is to help people understand what they need to do to stay healthy – and that starts with literacy.

Literacy skills are one of the strongest predictors of oral health status – stronger than age, income, employment status, education level, or racial/ethnic group.  It is estimated that at least a third of adults in the United States have limited health literacy and nearly half of all American adults - 90 million people - have difficulty understanding and using health information. Because of that, folks delay taking action, and before long, small problems become big health issues.  

Community health workers are stepping in to help people understand and navigate our health care system. It’s a very personal approach to health education. DentaQuest’s outreach team spends a lot of time in the community talking to people about oral health and explaining dental benefits and how to use them. National Minority Health Month gives us an opportunity to talk about the importance of community health workers — promotores*, or  outreach specialists. These committed team members are doing incredible work to bridge health equity across communities.

Community outreach specialists are hyper grassroots, frontline public health translators. Using the strength of their personality; personal contacts; trust; and an intimate understanding of the community’s strengths, needs and social networks, they tackle sensitive health topics, correct misinformation, and connect people with quality care.  In some parts of the United States, our certified promotores are at work in rural and urban areas at clinics, churches, workplaces, schools, and even around agricultural fields.

These outreach specialists are very important to achieving our goal of ending dental disease in children. An estimated 17 million low income children in the United States go without oral health care each year—that’s about one out of every five children. 

Outreach workers help figure out why that happens. It might be because the families don’t know they should seek dental care for the children. It could be because the caregivers don’t know where to find a dentist. And it could be that the parents simply fear going to the dentist and share that fear with their kids. Outreach workers calm fears, educate and guide caregivers, and help them navigate the complexities of our health care system. They introduce families to preventive services, and even check back to be sure treatments that are initiated get completed.

And it’s not just for children. Regular screenings and preventive education for people of all ages reduce poor health outcomes and health expenditures. Outreach specialists help adults understand systemic health – what smoking does to the body or how managing mouth disease helps control diabetes and heart disease, for instance. It’s the trusting relationship with the community that enables outreach specialists to cross the cultural divide and get people involved in disease prevention and wellness. This is a critical role, especially where language, transportation and cultural responses are barriers to health.

National Minority Health Month - with this year's theme of health equity - is an opportunity to acknowledge the dedicated work of our promotores / outreach specialists and to give thanks for their genuine servicio de corazon (service from the heart).

Thank you for all you do to advance health equity nationwide!

*Promotores de salud, also known as promotoras, is Spanish for “community health worker.” 

Building Health Literacy with Read Across America

If you’ve ever read a book with a child, you know the feeling of joy that comes from the experience, as well as how fundamental literacy is for people of any age.


So it is a source of pride that DentaQuest staff from coast to coast are joining teachers, celebrities, community members and parents in getting kids excited about reading through the National Education Association's (NEA's) Read Across America Campaign, a celebration of reading timed with the birthday of Dr. Seuss.


As health industry professionals, we have a responsibility to educate consumers so they can be active advocates for their own health. In its health literacy fact sheet, the CDC says 9 out of 10 adults struggle to understand and use health information, especially when it is unfamiliar, complex or jargon-filled. In fact, low literacy contributes to poor health outcomes, higher rates of hospital utilization, and less frequent use of preventive services, in addition to overall higher health care costs.


According to the National Center for Education Statistics, since 1993 just 53 to 58 percent of children ages 3 to 5 years read or were read to on a daily basis.


Simply reading daily with a child is important.

• Children who are read to at home have a higher success rate in school. 
• Children who read frequently develop stronger reading skills. 

As part of this year’s NEA campaign, our staff is visiting schools in:

• Columbia, S.C.; 
• Locust Hill and Richmond, Va.; 
• Lincoln, Neb.; 
• Milwaukee and Mequon, Wisc.; 
• Austin and Red Rock, Texas; 
• Doral, Fla.; 
• Snoqualmie, Wa.; 
• Anniston, Ala.; and 
• the Greater Boston area. 

We are reading one of three fun books --Throw Your Tooth on the Roof by Selby B. Beeler, The Tooth Book by Edward Miller, and Open Wide by Laurie Keller. The school’s library will also get the book to keep for future reading.

In Locust Hill #VA, Jackie wowed #HeadStart kids Middlesex Elementary with tales from The Tooth Book. #healthysmiles #READACROSSAMERICA pic.twitter.com/NU6kXJMrm4

— DentaQuest (@DentaQuest) March 1, 2017

Staff who have already visited classrooms said they felt like rock stars and oral health ambassadors. The children loved the facts we shared about their teeth, including how they should take care of their own teeth and gums.


Dental disease is the most common chronic childhood disease – and it is preventable. Introducing children to fun facts about their mouths, teeth and gums through the books we brought for Read Across America is a strong step in building the health literacy skills and disease prevention awareness that will empower this next generation of consumers to be health-knowledgeable adults.


Efforts like these will go a long way to helping us achieve our vision of being a nation where children can grow up free of dental disease.

What you don’t know about oral health may hurt you

By Dr. Doyle Williams, Chief Dental Officer

When people hear the phrase, “I’m in good health,” chances are they aren’t thinking about their mouths.

But you should. A regular check up with your dentist is as important as an annual physical. If you are someone who is afraid of the dentist and only make an appointment when you are in pain – think of this: regular preventive care is not painful and it will help prevent painful visits in the future. Good oral health serves much more than cosmetic purposes – it is integral to your overall good health.

Teeth, gums and oral soft tissue are all susceptible to a range of conditions and diseases, including cavities, gingivitis and oral cancer. The irony is that dental disease – cavities and gum disease – are nearly 100 percent preventable if you know what to do. It’s what you don’t know about oral health that may hurt you. That’s oral health literacy.

Culturally-competent oral health literacy is as important as seeing an oral health professional. For some, a painful tooth may be enough reason to schedule a visit with a dentist. But others may wait to see bleeding, swelling, or a fever before thinking about getting care.

That’s the challenge of oral health literacy – making sure people know how to care for their teeth and gums, making sure they know the signs for concern, and making sure they know when and where to go for help.

Here are two examples:

• The U.S. Surgeon General stressed that parents who are unfamiliar with the importance and care of their child’s primary teeth are unlikely to take appropriate action that may prevent Early Childhood Caries (ECC). That includes food choices, bedtime bottle routines, daily oral hygiene, and failure to see a health professional as the baby teeth are starting to come in.

• Recently, a 24-year old father from Cincinnati, Ohio died from a tooth infection because he could not afford his medication. When his face and mouth began to swell, the man visited the emergency room at his local hospital where he was given prescriptions for pain medication and antibiotics. Because he could not afford both medications, he only filled the prescription for the pain medication. That helped the pain but the infection continued to spread, eventually to his brain.

Knowledge is power. Everyone has a role in making sure that oral health is an integral part of their overall health.

What do you think needs to be addressed to improve America’s oral health literacy?