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From Trisha's Desk Trisha E. O'Hehir, RDH, BS, Editorial Director, Hygienetown Magazine

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Oral Health is Cool

Trisha E. O'Hehir,
RDH, BS
Editorial Director,
Hygienetown Magazine 		At some point during my long career as a dental hygienist, tooth decay moved into the number-one position of childhood diseases – something I don't like to admit. Hygienists know that prevention is more valuable than treating disease, unfortunately American culture financially rewards treatment and doesn't value prevention. It's a marketing problem, not a public health problem. Dental disease doesn't have an awareness ribbon color or a national spokesperson or a race for the cause. We know the cause. We know that dental disease is completely preventable, the public just isn't buying our message.

The dental hygiene profession must find new and better ways to disseminate its message of prevention. Realistically, an oral health marketing initiative will never rival the advertising clout of Coke or Pepsi, but if we're going to make a dent, it is time for dental hygiene to develop a cohesive campaign. With effective marketing, oral health could be it! People could be swayed to find the money for a healthy mouth. Oral health would be desirable, valuable and worth spending money to achieve.

The oral health marketing we have now is focused on tooth decay and access to dental care or "fillings." We need to change that focus to oral health, being kissable, having a great smile, having healthy teeth and having fresh breath. Let's turn the public health focus around and count how many kids have healthy mouths, how many kids are caries free and how many kids have great smiles; instead of counting how many kids have cavities and fillings.

Let's move prevention and oral health into the mainstream. All the time people say they cannot afford dental care, but they can find the money for Coke, Nike and Apple. These are all elective spending choices, but the truth is they have much more effective marketing than oral health.

Let's get a national spokesperson that young people identify with and will listen to about oral heath. They don't want to hear it from hygienists and dentists, but they'll listen intently when Hannah Montana or Dora the Explorer talks about it! If the celebrity spokesperson brushes, flosses, eats healthy snacks, gets five exposures to xylitol every day, avoids soda and sour acid candy and sees the hygienist regularly – kids might want to do that too. Not because it's a public health problem, but because it's cool.
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