Clinic brings preventive care to infants
With the dramatic rise in early childhood caries as the most common chronic disease, the need for preventive strategies has become increasingly urgent. To emphasise preventive oral health care for infants, the Chicago College of Dentistry the University of Illinois launched a predoctoral infant dental clinic. The clinic is intended to enhance access to and use of dental services for children with the goal of reducing oral health disparities in underserved populations.
Designed to offer families a wide range of services, UIC third year dental students complete caries risk assessment, provide parents with anticipatory guidance, conduct oral exams, prophylaxis and fluoride, as part of their year-long clinical paediatric experience. Dental Learning Hub spoke with Drs Sahar Alrayyes, predoctoral clinic director and Larry Salzmann, predoctoral programme director in the UIC’s department of paediatric dentistry, about the initiative.
What were the main reasons for establishing the infant dental clinic?
Sahar Alrayyes: The goal is to improve the overall health of children and families, training and enhancing the way dental health professionals practice, and increasing family participation in preventive care, learning and practicing healthy behaviours.
Larry Salzmann: Firstly, people do what they know. If we train our students to feel comfortable providing infant oral examinations by training them in school, they will be more likely to make available these services when they are out in practice. Secondly, statistics bear out that the most common infectious disease of childhood is dental caries. Our strongest weapon against early childhood caries is prevention, which includes early evaluation, parental education and intervention.
Do you anticipate having to educate parents about bringing their infants and young children to your clinic?
Sahar Alrayyes: We need to reach out to family practitioners and other primary care providers to make dental disease prevention an essential part of prenatal and early infancy, often long before children are seen by a dentist. Thus far, the parents have been open to the idea of bringing in their children in and giving the opportunity for the dental students to have hands-on experience.
Larry Salzmann: Yes – not only ‘spreading the gospel’ among parents’ groups but also other health professionals. The American Academy of Pediatrics has helped in this direction by beginning an infant oral health initiative to promote infant oral evaluations at the time of well-child visits.
Will the clinic offer a multidisciplinary platform for infants and young who require special dental care due to conditions such as cleft palate, etc?
Sahar Alrayyes: We are opening our doors to all youngsters including the ones requiring special dental care, giving dental students the opportunity for a better educational experience as behaviour may allow us.
Larry Salzmann: Some of these children are beyond the level of dental students. Fortunately, we have an affiliated postgraduate residency programme in paediatric dentistry to refer this population to, as well as a university-based craniofacial centre.
How do you hope the clinic will benefit the training of your dental students?
Sahar Alrayyes: We are hoping that the dental students would benefit from this hands-on experience and feel comfortable to carry it into their private practices after graduation, providing optimum oral health over a widespread region, ensuring access to preventive services.
Larry Salzmann: I think it’s a matter of familiarity and comfort for the students. When a family brings in their infant, or has questions about prevention, the more experience we can provide the students, the better prepared they are to provide answers and treatment.
What are your goals for the clinic over the next 5 years? What outcomes do you plan to achieve by then?
Sahar Alrayyes: Providing a dental home for infants where we can prevent the dental disease, build good practices and produce caries-free children.
Larry Salzmann: Possibly start earlier in the dental school curriculum and establishing a dental home for the families with students as providers. By combining the two concepts, I feel the students will benefit by seeing over time that their educational and preventive program will have an impact on young patients and the families will have less and less need for what we used to consider the reasons for ‘seeing the dentist,’.
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