A coalition of more than 35 leading dental organizations has partnered with an ad council to launch the first campaign on children’s oral health. This partnership entitled “Healthy Mouths, Healthy Lives” will be the first joint national multimedia public service campaign designed to teach parents and caregivers, as well as children, about the importance of oral health and the simple ways in which they can help prevent oral disease. There will be public service ads that will be in both English and Spanish distributed to more than 33,000 media outlets nationwide.
At Jefferson Dental, our mission is to enhance the dental health and well-being of ethnically diverse communities and we are committed to narrowing the social inequality of oral health and dental care.
Less than half of parents in the U.S. report that their child brushes their teeth twice a day or more. Dental decay is the most common chronic childhood disease with more than 16 million kids suffering from it. An unhealthy mouth can be associated with obesity, diabetes, and even heart disease. It is important to take care of your own oral health but also of your children. In the U.S., oral disease causes kids to miss 51 million school hours and parents to lose 25 million work hours annually. This is a serious problem that is predominantly found in low-income families.
The goal of the partnership is to improve oral health in America and ultimately reach the entire population in North America to help them understand the relationship of oral health to total health. To read more about this partnership and other issues visits: http://www.ada.org/en
