Contact: Harriet Laird
STARKVILLE, Miss.--The Social Science Research Center at Mississippi State is helping to close a missing link in tooth decay prevention among more than 400 Delta children.
Working with colleagues in the Mississippi State Department of Health, members of the university's SSRC staff are in the first year of the Delta Oral Health Project. Their collaboration seeks to address children's oral health issues in three ways: direct services, education and policy.
"This is a comprehensive attempt to provide children with access to oral health services and to research best practices," said SSRC project coordinator Heather Hanna.
"It's our goal to see that children in the Delta have better oral health outcomes and that their caregivers have the tools needed to provide the best possible oral health environments," she added.
Currently in the education phase, the team is using a specialized oral health curriculum titled "Cavity Free Kids" to teach caregivers, such as child care staff and parents, ways to approach the subject with children.
Carla Bassett, a registered dental hygienist and a branch director with MSDH's Office of Oral Health, said "best practices" materials from the Washington Dental Services Foundation are supplying caregivers with innovative, hands-on information that can be used effectively to promote good oral health among children.
"By using the foundation's 'Cavity Free Kids' curriculum, our hope is to train non-dental professionals, so they then can train others around them," Bassett explained.
Dr. Nicholas Mosca, MSDH's state dental director, also expressed the urgency in this type of health education.
"This is imperative for those who interact with young children because kids need to be reached by the time they are 1 to 2 years old," Mosca said, adding, "The age of 3 is too late."
In direct dental services, children in 18 licensed child care centers in Coahoma County have received oral health screenings and fluoride varnish. Thirty-five percent of the 400 involved also have been referred to dental professionals.
According to Hanna, children will be screened a second time this spring and the MSDH mobile dental unit will be available for those in need of continued treatment.
Looking to the future, Hanna said the project's final component is laying groundwork for policy changes that can positively affect children's oral health by mapping access to fluoridation and to dental care providers, and by surveying the general public.
"Then policies that affect these services can be better understood and more light can be shed on support for various policy initiatives," she said.
NEWS EDITORS/DIRECTORS: For more information on the project, contact Hanna at 662-325-8102 or heather.hanna@ssrc.msstate.edu.
For more information about Mississippi State University, see http://www.msstate.edu/.