Fluoride Varnishing Program Reaches Over 4,000 Children

According to an article by Amschler in the Journal of School Health, approximately 25% of US school-aged children have 75% of all dental decay, and almost 20% of children aged 2-4 have dental caries or cavities.  There have been studies that have shown that negative effects from oral health can affect the short-term and long-term life of a person.  Some of these effects can result in lasting physical, psychological, and developmental damage and lead to poor school attendance, lost productivity, worsened job prospects, and impaired nutrition. 

 

The dental varnishing campaign that is put on by Intermountain Healthcare and Community Health Connect (CHC) occurs twice a year in Utah County’s title one schools.  This campaign targets children with dental health needs and prevents dental decay through our semi-annual fluoride varnish program.  Dental assisting students from surrounding Mountainland Applied Technology College (MATC) schools come into the elementary schools to apply the varnish to the children’s teeth.  There are also Utah Valley University and Brigham Young University Pre-Medical students that come and volunteer during the vanishings as well.  In previous years we have had a school assembly where the UVU and BYU students perform educational skits for the entire elementary school.  Due to the time constraints and other issues we decided to hold off on the assemblies this year and just do the varnishing.  We still had the BYU and UVU volunteers educate the children as they waited in line. This year we made special efforts to utilize the school nurses at each varnishing.  We had the school nurse check suspected level 3’s and 4’s.  This helped us pinpoint the children that were in the most need of dental attention, and cut down on falsely identified level 3’s and 4’s.  In many schools we cut the list of children that needed continued dental care in half. This gave school nurses the ability to give more attention to the children that were really in need of additional dental care. Because of this, more correctly-identified children enrolled at Community Health Connect and will receive care from a dentist than ever before. 
 

The success of this year’s dental varnishing was facilitated by our partnerships with Intermountain Healthcare, MATC, school nurses, the local health department, and the Utah Migrant Farms. Worker Program. Together, we provided supplies and materials that were used during each varnishing session.  In addition, we donated dental hygiene kits (including a toothbrush, toothpaste, and floss) to every student in each school; the kits ensured that each child had the necessary tools to care for their teeth and use the skills they learned from the volunteers and in the dental assemblies.   We appreciate the generosity of our many partners in our continuing effort to improve the dental care of our county’s children.