Building Healthy Smiles
Three Ventura County Public Health programs and a community collaborative organization have joined forces to complete a project that is part of the Public Health Department’s Strategic Plan for Fiscal Year 2015-16.
The Ventura County Oral Health Collaborative, which is a dynamic group of community leaders whose focus is improving the oral health of all children in Ventura County, developed an evidence-based oral health education module for pregnant women and children aged 0-5, called Building Healthy Smiles, in English and Spanish,that can be implemented in almost any health care setting.
The original plan was for the Ventura County WIC Program to conduct this oral health curriculum with every family with an infant. That’s about 4400 families. However, since the curriculum is helpful and pertinent for all categories of women who participate with the WIC Program (post-partum as well as pregnant women), WIC administrators decided to offer the oral health education to all WIC families over the course of this first year of the project. That expands the audience to about 10,000 families.
Ventura County Public Health Clinics offer fluoride dental varnish services to young children at low or no cost. An additional aspect of this collaborative project is that after conducting a Healthy Smiles education session, WIC teachers offer a bilingual flyer about the availability of dental varnish to every WIC family.
Meanwhile, Ventura County CHDP Program is championing the Building Healthy Smiles curriculum among health care provides who serve young families throughout our County. In year one alone, we expect that thousands of County families will be exposed to the messages in the Building Healthy Smiles class. The goal of this extensive collaboration is to increase the oral health of low income families with young children by preventing dental caries in vulnerable populations. We believe this project will truly make a difference to the health of many Ventura County families.