America’s Toothfairy®
…because every child deserves a healthy smile.
Oral Health Education
Toothfairy Island
America’s ToothFairy is dedicated to increasing oral health literacy for underserved children and their families. All Affiliates are provided with an engaging, comprehensive oral health curriculum designed to educate parents and children of all ages on maintaining and enhancing oral health at home.
Toothfairy Island (TFI) is a science-based curriculum available in English or Spanish. The materials include puzzles, games, puppets, charts and other hands-on activities that help children have fun while learning about good oral health. The interactive, character-based TFI program expands on the universality of the Toothfairy. It is based on the belief that the mouth is the gateway to the body and therefore, oral health is closely tied to overall health and well-being.
Nutrition, prevention of germs transmission, safe play, true science and oral health instruction are all integrated into the wide variety of engaging materials.
Toothfairy Island curriculum packages for Affiliates are used in a variety of settings:
- Patients in active treatment at Affiliate centers
- School based oral health programs
- Student Field Trips to Affiliate centers
- Dental screenings in schools, health fairs, etc.
Learn more about the Toothfairy Island educational curriculum.
Baby Oral Health Program (bOHP)
Despite improvement in the overall oral health of Americans, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported a significant increase in dental caries among children ages 2-5 years, setting the stage for many young children to develop a lifetime of complications from poor oral health.
Preschool-aged children with early preventive dental visits are more likely to use subsequent preventive dental services and experience lower dentally-related costs. At the same time, the American Dental Association now recommends all children experience their first preventive dental visit by age 1. Taken together, it is clear that more parents will soon be looking to the general dentists to offer infant and toddler oral health services; however, training in these services is relatively new in most dental school curricula, leaving many general dentists without the scientific underpinnings or clinical experience to cater to infants and toddlers.
To address this problem, the Department of Pediatric Dentistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has developed an educational program titled Baby Oral Health Program (bOHP). As part of this program, an infant and toddler oral health kit has been developed to provide the entire dental team with the necessary background information, technique demonstration and educational materials. This preventive program promotes early oral health values and the establishment of a dental patient for life.
bOHP materials are provided to each America’s ToothFairy Affiliate.
