Continuing Education Opportunity for CCHC

“Healthy Smiles Through Child Care Health Consultation” is an online training course for child care health consultants on promoting oral health in child care settings.  The course was developed through a three-year federally-funded continuing education project (Maternal and Child Health Bureau Grant # T21MC03417) and continues to be freely offered by the National Training Institute for Child Care Health Consultants (NTI). Healthy Smiles presents the most current research on children’s oral health, including common diseases, prevention strategies, access to a dental home, promoting oral health in child care, and oral health for children with special needs. During the final year of the grant (2007), 64 CCHCs nationwide participated in a pilot study of the course to measure its effectiveness in promoting preventive oral health policies and practices in child care facilities. Results from this pilot are encouraging. In baseline surveys, pilot participants reported that 47% of their child care facilities had an oral health policy of any kind. After the Healthy Smiles consultation, 81% of the facilities had at least one oral health policy. Besides increased policies, each of the 64 consultants reported improvements in preventive oral health measures as a result of their consultation ranging from dental hygiene practices (23% improvement) to record-keeping (21% improvement) to nutrition (20% improvement). The overall outcome of the project demonstrated that the CCHC has an important role in promoting oral health for children in child care settings. The Healthy Smiles course is available free-of-charge through NTI's public website. To view the course, and to download additional materials including a Toolkit for use in presenting information about oral health to child care providers and other caretakers, please visit http://nti.unc.edu/healthy_smiles/

 

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