Tag: children

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AARP Purpose Prize Alumni Newsletter

Dr. Adele Della Torre was invited to write a newsletter article for The AARP Purpose Prize Alumni Newsletter:

Ready Set Smile is a community-based organization whose mission is to improve the oral health of children through school-based onsite dental services and classroom education. RSS partners with 27 Minneapolis schools (preschool through 8th grade) that serve high numbers of children without access to dental care.

Our work has been upended by the COVID-19 pandemic, but this health crisis has also given us clarity on the importance of our mission. The pandemic has amplified the racial inequities throughout our nation and my home city, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Further, the site of George Floyd’s killing is just blocks from Ready, Set, Smile’s office and so we are acutely aware of the heightened issues resulting from racial tensions in the community. We are pleased that Minneapolis has become an epicenter of a growing wave of racial justice awareness. I cannot help but connect the health disparities that our nonprofit fights with the hope that rises from our community’s actions to combat COVID and racial injustice.

Most people are unaware that dental decay is the most prevalent chronic childhood disease and is concentrated in children who lack access to preventive dental care. In fact, research shows that 80% of decay occurs in 15-20% of our children, almost all of whom live in poverty. Although children rarely die from dental infections, dental decay is one of the most common reasons for missing school and is therefore a disruptor of an afflicted child’s education. Our data confirms these facts, as 56% of the children seen in our schools have active decay at their first visit with us. Dental decay is a disease that is 100% preventable, but the systemic barriers to access dental care make good oral health difficult to achieve.

What does a school-based portable dental clinic do when schools are closed? We pivot.

● We are seeking alternative sites in institutions such as community centers, daycare centers, congregations, teen-parent programs and teen homeless shelters.

● A local orthodontist has loaned us his office to serve children on the two days each week it is not in use.

● We are piloting setting up our portable clinic in our current office space for the children in our immediate neighborhood.

● We are pursuing designation as a Telehealth provider in order to provide oral health education to families and schools.

● We will modify our traditional clinic schedules to accommodate school hybrid scheduling.

Although these alternatives require a dramatic shift from our school-based model, we believe that the spirit of our mission requires that we continue to bring dental care to children in locations where they feel comfortable. A child’s oral health is critical to their self-esteem, their ability to thrive and to have a future of good health. Each of us do what we do best to purposefully improve our world.

The pandemic has forced innovative solutions. We are an organization that heals our community. Our solutions to this health disparity are simple. Good oral health impacts a child’s ability to learn, to smile, to nourish and improves the future of their overall health. Focus on what you do best to purposefully improve the world.

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Ready Set Smile 2017-2018 Fiscal Year Report

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With great appreciation, I present this fiscal year-end report on ADT Dental’s nonprofit,

Ready Set Smile.

Dr. Adele Della Torre

Mission:  Ready Set Smile prepares and empowers all children to care for their oral health through onsite school-based clinics and education. We believe that with preventive services and a caring environment, all children can be free of dental disease.

2017-18 Fiscal Year Report

RSS has completed its fifth school year serving Minneapolis schools with low-resourced families, a population that faces many barriers to accessing routine dental care. In September 2017, we added 4 schools for a total of 9 elementary schools and 5 early childhood programs. All children who are registered for our services receive cleanings, atraumatic decay arresting procedures, fluoride treatments, sealants and one-on-one oral hygiene instruction. This summer we are adding 3 additional preschools and one Northside elementary school.

This last school year we treated 1219 children and provided classroom education to 2500 children and parents of preschoolers with modules on the science and lifestyle for good oral health.  All were taught by our Community Health Workers (CHW).

Children diagnosed with urgent dental needs were referred to one of our partnering clinics. Our CHWs are critical to the successful response rate from our families. They are relevant to our families because they represent the Latino, Somali, Hmong and African American communities.

This year we have two new outstanding partners: Southside Community Health Services, a federally-funded medical and dental clinic, is providing us their Mobile Clinic at no cost. They were impressed with our outreach success and asked how we could collaborate. We have used their 2-dental operatory “RV” on several occasions. This upcoming school year, we will have access to their mobile unit as needed. Southside has invited us to collaborate on a grant for this upcoming year. They are also setting up one Saturday a month, starting in September, for Ready Set Smile registrants’ families to receive comprehensive dental care — with or without insurance!

The University of Minnesota – School of Dentistry (U of M-SOD) has chosen RSS as a community partner for a 2018 Health Disparities Grant and a Grand Challenge Grant. As the community organization, we provide the schools and services and U of M staff provides the rigorous academic evaluation to demonstrate that we are improving the oral health of children.

Bailee Jerger, a graduate student at the U of M-SOD, has taken on RSS as her Capstone Project. Over the next year she will be studying our financials and employees’ division of labor to assess the viability of a school-based dental program based on a detailed cost analysis.

Ready Set Smile will be featured on the website of a prestigious national organization, ASTDD (Association of State and Territorial Dental Directors). Dr. Della Torre submitted a description of our program at the request of the Minnesota Department of Health in December. We are now published on their website under Best Practice Approach Report – fluoride use in school programs. Our program’s practices is publicly available on a national forum as a best practice school-based program.

Incredibly, 35% of the children we serve are uninsured. Most of these children are immigrants to our country who do not understand our systems or fear government programs.  Others do not understand that they must renew their child’s medicaid insurance and still others fall into the donut hole of earning too much for MNSure, but are unable to afford dental services. Our services are available to all families at no cost, so this is a heavy burden on our program. This year our CHWs were certified as insurance navigators to help families register or renew health and dental insurance for our families.

Finally, over our first four years we have reduced the incidence of decay by 25% and reduced the number of children with active decay by 30%. Between this school year and last, we reduced the number of children with urgent needs (abscessed teeth, reported pain, or severe decay) by 7%. We will receive our 5th school year’s data analysis in the fall.

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Oral Health

Why ADT Dental Founded Ready Set Smile

RSS blog pic

Have you heard that the mouth is the gateway to the body, that oral health is a reflection on one’s general health, or that poor oral health decreases an individual’s quality of life? Yes, good oral health is critical to well being. Unfortunately, good oral health is not a given. In today’s societal environment, it requires 3 conscious decisions; to eat well, practice good oral hygiene and have regular dental visits. Without these three lifestyle commitments, one’s oral health will deteriorate over time.

Children do not make these decisions. Their parents do it for them.  For the most vulnerable children in our community, the road to good oral health is not part of their upbringing. Why is this?

  1. Misinformed Parents:  Some parents are unaware of the importance of their children’s teeth. They believe their children’s teeth are disposable, because they will be replaced by their adult teeth. They generally don’t know that the care of their child’s teeth should begin with the eruption of the first tooth.
  1. Access to Dental Care: Many Minnesota dentists do not accept Medicaid insurances because the reimbursement is literally the worst in the nation. Finding a local dentist who accepts their insurance is difficult at best.
  1. Stress of Poverty: A child’s oral hygiene is not a priority for a family under the stress of poverty. Some children don’t even have a toothbrush at home, or even worse, a home in which to keep a toothbrush.
  1. Diet: The diets of low income families are full of refined carbohydrates and processed foods which are highly cariogenic and caloric. These foods are the least expensive and simplest to prepare; helpful to a family with limited resources, but harmful to their health.
  1. Other Barriers: Lack of transportation, time from work, belief there are hidden expenses, cultural fears, mistrust of the profession due to previous traumatic dental experiences

This is why 85% of tooth decay in Minnesota occurs in 15% of the population. Decay is concentrated in children of low resources.

For these reasons, ADT Dental founded the nonprofit, Ready Set Smile. We wanted to use our gifts and success to give back to the community. And we are!

Through our non-profit Ready Set Smile, we reach the children in their schools with onsite clinics that provide the necessary preventive services such as cleanings, fluoride treatments and sealants.  We also use innovative techniques and products that actually arrest decay. For children with urgent needs, we find dental homes through referrals. But our oral health service does not stop there.

The children receive a full curriculum during the school year in their classrooms. They learn about the science of oral health and nutrition with hands on experiments geared to each grade level. Besides one-on-one hygiene instruction in our clinic, we augment their learning with our classroom instruction. We build successful relationships with the children, so they don’t grow up with fear of dental care. Children see the staff in the clinic, in their classrooms, and in the halls.

We understand that the parents are the gateway to their child’s health. At every opportunity our staff is present to engage the parents: open house events, after school meetings, conference days. Our staff becomes the oral health educators for the entire school community working beside the school nurses, the social workers and parent liaisons. They provide resources and connections for families to oral health facilities.

Finally, we honor the families by hiring staff that are from their cultural backgrounds. Our Communities Health Workers are Somali, Hmong, and African American. Some of our dental providers are Hispanic. Our staff comfortably reaches out to the families and teaches with cultural competency. We recognize the importance that parents find our staff approachable.

This work is not easy and as we begin our 4th year, our goal is to grow with stability.

We are so thankful for all that ADT Dental patients have done for us since our inception. Maybe some day every school in Minneapolis or even the State will have these wonderful resources and all children in Minnesota will be free of tooth decay.