Parents and their children struggle to carve out time in their schedules for dental visits, meaning dental care can fall by the wayside when life gets busy.
But school-based dental clinics bring dental care directly to the children they serve.
“We’ve taken care of so many kids that haven’t—that would not have been able to—see a dentist otherwise, and we’re finding disease that, if left untreated, it would eventually end up in the emergency department,” says Dr. Kim Hammersmith.
Hammersmith is the lead dentist for Nationwide Children’s Hospital’s traveling dental health clinic. The clinic, which is funded by a Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) grant, is one of many similar programs spread throughout the United States.
According to the HRSA, its programs support the communities that are most in need—and those include people with low incomes, pregnant people and children.
Since Nationwide Children’s clinic began in 2021, Hammersmith says the need for dental care among children has been high. “[Eighty-five percent] of our patients have not seen a dentist in the last three years—or ever,” she says.
Dental care can make a big difference
for kids, both for their health and for their success in school.
“When children have pain in their mouth, they tend to eat different foods, like softer foods, which are usually the foods that are more processed and less healthy for them when they have mouth pain, and some of these kids have been living with chronic mouth pain to the point that they don’t even realize that their mouth hurts—they just think that’s a normal thing,” Hammersmith says.
“They don’t sleep as well, they don’t pay attention as well, they can’t learn as well, so we’ve had some kids really improve behavior that people weren’t attributing to their teeth after we’ve been able to take care of their teeth,” she says.
Hammersmith, who has been a dentist for more than 16 years, is passionate about bringing dental care to kids through the Nationwide Children’s project.
The full-service traveling clinic sets up shop at a host school where it offers fluoride treatments, oral exams, X-rays, cleanings, sealants, fillings, extractions, stainless steel crowns and more.
To participate in the clinic, schools send home consent forms for parents to fill out and students receive care during the school day. According to Hammersmith, this helps children who would otherwise miss out on vital dental care to receive it while missing a minimal amount of class.
Today, one of the biggest barriers to children getting the care they need is being able to actually get to the dentist. With this program, that barrier is broken.
“[Parents] have to answer their phone when [kids] need permission to do a treatment, but they don’t need to take time off work, they don’t need to, you know, borrow a car. They don’t need to drive downtown, they don’t need to find a dentist,” Hammersmith explains.
Tips for Parents
Good dental hygiene starts in the home, and it starts from the first tooth.
“The biggest killers of teeth that I see as a dentist are juice and snacks,” Hammersmith says.
To counter these tooth killers, she recommends switching out sugary beverages for water or zero-calorie flavored water and cutting out sticky and carb-heavy snacks.
tarting early and setting a good example themselves. Hammersmith says that until children are 3 years old, a small, rice-sized portion of toothpaste will work. After 3, parents can move their children up to using a pea-sized amount.
Read More: How to Encourage Children to Brush their Teeth
“I don’t recommend that parents buy the training toothpaste—that’s not helpful for the teeth,” Hammersmith says. “That might teach your kids about brushing, but it actually doesn’t re-strengthen your teeth to counteract the sugars and the carbs.”
Toothpaste should have fluoride.
“Those [kid-sized] amounts are 100% safe to swallow. They’re so small they won’t hurt your belly or cause any harm—because we know kids aren’t spitting,” Hammersmith says. “We also always say, ‘spit, don’t rinse.’”
While many kids are taught to rinse with water or mouthwash, that’s counterproductive because it prevents the fluoride from sitting on the teeth and doing its job.
