Mid-Michigan District Health Department (MMDHD) is going to Fall for Smiles- and we hope you will join us.
Fall for Smiles is a nation-wide initiative that aims to increase awareness about the importance of oral health and to ensure that people of all ages make having a healthy mouth a priority by promoting daily brushing and flossing, scheduling regular dental visits, choosing healthy foods, and not using tobacco.
The Fall for Smiles campaign was launched by Oral Health America (OHA), a national, non-profit organization dedicated to connecting communities with resources to increase access to dental care, education and advocacy. The group, which commissioned a recent survey regarding the oral health habits of our nation’s youth, uncovered some startled statistics. According to their findings, children do not report brushing and flossing as often as their parents think they should.
Eighty-seven percent of parents feel children should brush their teeth twice a day or more; however, just 64 percent of children say they brush their teeth that often. In addition, seven in ten parents say they give a brushing reminder on a daily basis, but less than half that number of children (34 percent) remember hearing their parents give these reminders.
What’s more, as they get older, children hear about oral health from parents and schools less and less. Elementary school students (65 percent) are far more likely to have received this instruction than middle (36 percent) and high school (19 percent) students, despite the fact that 78 percent of teenagers have experienced tooth decay.
This new information, coupled with the knowledge that tooth decay is the number one chronic childhood disease in the U.S., and that children lose over 51 million school hours each year due to dental related illness, led OHA to take action and launch the Fall for Smiles campaign.
The goal of the campaign is to inform Americans what they can do to keep their mouths healthy, and to remind parents that they can have a positive impact on the oral and overall health of their children, by teaching them good habits that will last a lifetime. Parents can accomplish this by spending just two minutes, twice a day with younger children to make sure they are not only brushing and flossing their teeth, but doing it right. They should also let older children know why they should keep their mouths clean and that poor oral health affects appearance and employability.
This fall, make the commitment to add oral health to your back-to-school routine, leading to a lifetime of healthy smiles. For more information about Fall for Smiles, please visit: www.oralhealthamerica.org or www.FallforSmiles.org.