Lifespan Dental Education: The Office of Oral Health and Dentistry education efforts moving will be aimed across a lifetime of target audience age groups: 0-5, 6-18, 19-64 and 65+ as each category has a specific population with unique dental needs and challenges as described in the needs assessment section of this dashboard. This age relevant information will come from reliable professional sources such as the American Dental Association, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, The Association of State and Territorial Dental Directors and the Council for State and Territorial Epidemiologists. Efforts will be aimed at expectant mothers, parents, children, students, teenagers, adults, senior citizens and other vulnerable groups. It will be shared with local health departments, federally-qualified health centers, private dental offices and Nebraska dental colleges. Information on lifespan dental education efforts will be posted and updated on a regular basis on our Nebraska DHHS OOHD website www.dhhs.ne.gov/dental.

Children’s Dental Health Month: February is National Children's Dental Health Month. In 2015 The Office of Oral Health and Dentistry collaborated with Together for Kids and Families and the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring Program (in the Lifespan Health Unit) and the Head Start State Collaboration Office (in the Nebraska Department of Education) to provide oral health kits to approximately 6,000 Head Start and Early Head Start students across the state. Each oral health kit contained 1 toddler tooth brush, 1 tube of children’s tooth paste, 1 adult tooth brush, a 2 minute timer and educational materials. We hope that this can become an annual event with more partnerships and activities that can increase the impact of this health promotion campaign across Nebraska.

Early Dental Health Starter Kits: The OOHD has developed an dental hygiene kit aimed at infants and children age 0-5. These specialized cleaning tools are designed by age to help mothers and their babies remove dental plaque and improve oral hygiene through the early years of development when early childhood caries often occur. The kit comes with five cleaning aides, a two-minute time and an instruction card in English and Spanish. In 2016, about 8,500 kits were sent out to the Nebraska Early Childhood Development Network, Early Head Start and the Nebraska Maternal, Infant, Child Home Visiting program, Sixpence and several Foster Care programs. The OOHD will look to partner with more program to further distribute these kits in the future.