Page 18 - America's ToothFairy 2024 Impact

SMILE GUARDIAN PROGRAM
School Nurses Education Initiative
This year we expanded our commitment to improve oral health education by launching the School Nurse Oral Health HERO Initiative, thanks to a generous $75,000 grant from the Delta Dental Foundation. Recognizing that children across the U.S. miss millions of instructional hours due to dental disease, this initiative empowers school nurses to provide critical oral health resources to students, particularly in underserved communities where access to dental care is limited.
Following a successful pilot in North Carolina, where 70% of applicants for oral health resource kits were school nurses, we collaborated with nurses from 73 schools across Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan. These efforts reached 30,000 students and their families with educational kits containing an Oral Health Action HERO activity booklet, a dry-erase brushing chart, and oral care products. Additional materials, such as bi-lingual posters, videos, and links to safety-net dental clinics were also provided to support school nurses in their outreach efforts.
This initiative highlights our dedication to preventive oral health. Partners like the Delta Dental Foundation play a vital role in expanding access to these resources, allowing school nurses —often overlooked champions of public health— to connect families with essential oral health education and services.
Additional education kits were distributed to food banks in Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Illinois, and public libraries in South Dakota with support from Delta Dental. Read more about some of these initiatives at AmericasToothFairy.org/impact.