Helping children to develop good oral hygiene habits

Establishing good oral hygiene habits early in a child’s life will help to prevent tooth decay and gum disease in the future. As part of last year’s Gum Health Awareness Day campaign, the BSP focused on raising awareness of the importance of gum health in childhood.

Our campaign ‘A lifetime of smiling’ reinforced the message that it is never too early to develop good oral hygiene habits.  We produced a range of educational materials that are available on our website as pdf downloads: https://www.bsperio.org.uk/patients/gumhealthday2018/index.html

We are also proud to promote the excellent work that has been done through a collaboration between Oral-B and the University of Leeds, in creating the Strong Teeth Children’s Toolkit.

The Strong Teeth support package and resources have been developed to help the dental team provide effective oral health advice to parents and their young children. Through their joint working, Oral-B and the University of Leeds, led by Dr Peter Day, engaged with dental teams, parents and children from various backgrounds and communities, to develop the resources. In addition, they used psychological theory and research to develop evidence-based materials, in order to maximise the chance that parents of young children will adopt the advice and establish protective home-based oral health habits for life.

It is their hope that the resulting Strong Teeth resources, training manual and videos will help dental professionals to have effective oral care conversations with parents of young children and support the wider campaign aim of achieving a decay free childhood for children in the UK. 

We have made the resource available to view and download on the Professionals, Publications page of our website: https://www.bsperio.org.uk/publications/index.php

If you would like a Strong Teeth toolkit for your practice, please contact the Oral-B customer support team: customerservice@dentalcare.co.uk (0870 242 1850)