School and dental practice partnerships – a route to awesome oral health
NewsPosted by: Dental Design 1st September 2022
A campaign to clean up the UK’s snacking habits has been launched by social enterprise Awesome Oral Health. Established by dental nurse Jo Dawson, a Cambridgeshire mother-of-two, the campaign is supported by a group of big hitters from the dental world, on a mission to make the UK’s snacking culture healthier.
Jo’s campaign has three aims – to encourage:
- all the UK’s primary schools to have a ‘Healthy Snack policy’ in place.
- for primary schools to form partnerships with dental practices
- to develop understanding of what constitutes a tooth-friendly snack
Jo’s campaigning work began after her first daughter went to primary school. Like many other children in primary education, she benefits from the government-funded School Fruit and Vegetable scheme (SFVS). Jo loves that her daughter receives daily fresh fruit – or sometimes vegetables – but is unhappy that dried raisins are supplied as a snack on the first day of term as well as the first day after half-term. This led to Jo establishing the Raisin Awareness Campaign in 2018.
Jo warns: “Dried fruit can be damaging for teeth if they are regularly eaten as a snack, although an otherwise healthy and nutritious food. They have a high sugar content and get stuck on the surfaces of the molars, as well as between the teeth. I decided I had to raise awareness of the increased risk of tooth decay posed by snacking on dried fruit.”
“Twice a term may not seem like a big deal but if the school gives its blessing to raisins delivered by the SFVS, head teachers can’t ask parents not to send in dried fruits for the older children’s snacks every day.”
Jo has approached the SFVS, the Chief Dental Officer for England, Public Health England and her MP. While so far she can’t get the SFVS policy changed, she has managed to win the support of her daughter’s school. Head teacher Carol Shaw, the teaching staff and the Governors have supported a collaboration with the dental practice where Jo works. Now the dental practice is funding tooth-friendly vegetables to be supplied to the school on the first day of each term and half-term.
Miss Shaw commented: “The concept of forging a relationship with a dental practice is inspired. At Pendragon Community Primary School, children and their parents are now more aware of the importance of healthy eating and regular tooth-brushing. It’s a wonderful collaboration.”
Meanwhile Wail Girgis, Clinical Director at the partner dental practice, Devonshire House in Cambridgeshire, said what Jo was doing was very special. “If you talk directly to the children and explain how harmful sugary snacks can be, they get it. If you reach them young enough, they absorb the message.”
In relation to the partnership, he said: “This is the right thing to do. It’s a very small amount of money to get an important message across. Jo takes the lead with this campaign – it’s very empowering for dental nurses to take on a role like this. If more dental practices formed a partnership with their local primary school, it could lead to massive change.”
This positive partnership has inspired Jo to invite other dental practices to link with primary schools to develop healthy snack policies and achieve the status of a tooth-friendly school. In 2021, Jo raised the bar on the Raisin Awareness Campaign and established a Community Interest Company, Awesome Oral Health, with a website featuring helpful resources. She is on a mission to help families understand how harmful sweet drinks and snacks can be and to follow evidence-based dental advice to limit any products high in sugar to mealtimes.
Nigel Carter OBE, Chairman of the Oral Health Foundation, commented: “Jo has come up with a fantastic idea of encouraging dental practices to create formal links with the schools in their area. With oral health coming into the Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 curricula for the first time this academic year the time has never been better to raise the profile of oral health in schools and the importance of a healthy diet.
Ben Atkins, also an advisory board member and oral health ambassador, said: “The initiative is an amazing one. Information and education at this early stage will make such a massive difference in the fight against a fully preventable disease like dental decay.”
Urshla (Oosh) Devalia, BSPD’s Honorary Secretary, said: “Innovative ideas to improve oral health, of which the Awesome Oral Health initiative is a great example, are often embedded in community collaboration. BSPD is passionate about supporting innovations of this kind and are delighted that Jo Dawson, a previous runner-up in BSPD’s Outstanding Innovation Award, is driving forward her educational agenda. As a next step, we would like to see a pilot scheme in which dental practices partner with schools to obtain an understanding of the challenges and benefits of a collaborative approach and how such partnerships might work in the interests of children’s oral health.”
Among the other big hitters on the advisory board are: Simon Hearnshaw, a dentist and trainer for Health Education England, Ingrid Perry MBE, a former dental nurse and the first winner of BSPD’s Outstanding Innovation Award, Pam Swain, Chief Executive of the British Association of British Dental Nurses, Melanie Pomphrett, dental hygienist and Professional Brand Manager for Colgate-Palmolive, Northern Europe and Therapists and Victoria Wilson, also a dental therapist and founder of the Smile Revolution Growth Hub.
