Improving dental health one smile at a time – BSDHT

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Posted by: Dental Design 1st March 2018

The British Society of Dental Hygiene and Therapy (BSDHT) is delighted to launch this year’s First Smiles campaign, which will be held on Friday 15^th June 2018.

First Smiles is about raising awareness of the importance of good dental health from a young age. It provides an opportunity to focus on getting those all-important messages out to the local community, encouraging the dental team to engage with children, their parents, carers and teachers and demonstrate how oral health could impact on their general well being even from the early years.

The campaign aims to:

Build essential relationships between nurseries, schools and their local dental practices

Educate children and those who care for them about the fundamental aspects of good dental health

Improve the oral hygiene habits of children across the UK

Make children feel more comfortable about visiting a dental practice

Integrate oral hygiene within health education in schools

Tackle the worrying rise in tooth decay and extractions among children in the UK

What can you do?

It’s easy to get involved with the initiative this year. To get started, download our ‘Introduction to First Smiles’ from the website for more information or read the FAQs page to clarify any queries you might have.

Next, identify a local nursery, school or youth centre that you could visit or collaborative with in order to meet and teach young people about the benefits of dental health. There are templates for letters to send to such organisations available on the BSDHT website, which you might find useful at this stage.

Then you’ll need to organise a presentation or lesson of some kind. Subjects you might like to cover could include toothbrushing techniques, with demonstrations on models and practise sessions with a class. You could share information on why teeth and gums are so important for general health and what they are for. Particularly topical at the moment is the impact of sugar, so you could use this time to discuss the dangers of too much sugar and suggest what foods and drinks should only be enjoyed on special occasions.

Here’s what professionals did last year to give you some more ideas:

“One session I did was to a lovely group of 2- and 3-year-old children at Countryside Day Nursery in Gloucestershire, aiming to teach them how to brush their teeth and gums. I took along with me Dan the Dinosaur, masks, mirrors, gloves and mouth mirrors – the children loved helping to clean Dan’s dirty teeth! I also wanted them to see what visiting the dentist is like, so everyone had a chance to try on gloves and masks, and hold a mouth mirror to look at their teeth and those of their friends.” – Joanne Martin

“The First Smiles day was super and we all had a great time. The kids dressed up in gloves and masks, we talked about looking after our teeth, visiting the dentist and sugars in food. To make it interactive the kids put foods on a good/bad board with a superhero theme, then we counted how much sugar was in the food and put it into bags so they could see it visually. I will definitely do it again. I think it is such a good idea and really important. As a society, I think the more we can educate parents and teachers too, the better – after all, it’s not the 5-year-olds who pack their lunchboxes!” – Kate Paddock

“I found the dental buddy app very useful and easy to use on the teacher’s smart board. The children seemed to like the interaction. I also took in various different foods and drinks to do a ‘good food, bad food’ quiz. This was very interesting for both the children and teachers! I took some leaflets from my practice with a reminder of how to look after teeth for the children and a picture to colour in.” – Clare Pearson

“I had a discussion with my children’s nursery and they wanted me to attend. I was very excited as I had never done anything like this before and it went surprisingly well. I have now been asked to do this on an annual basis by the nursery, which of course, I am happy to do. The nursery also run parent workshops and I have been asked to do a talk at their next event in regards to oral health, where I will be stressing the importance of recent newspaper articles on the need for dental check ups for babies and toddlers.” – Maria Fernandez

Additional support for participants

In addition to the materials available on the website, the BSDHT is thrilled to be offering some free products for the dental team to take with them and give out to the children they see. Oral-B has kindly donated toothbrushes and toothpastes for professionals to give out, while Brushlink has offered some devices available on a first-come, first-serve basis to aid oral hygiene instruction. For more information, please contact the BSDHT.

Here’s to another successful First Smiles!