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Dental Health Education and Dental Health Campaign
The principle that parents and children can help themselves to control and
often eliminate dental disease is well established. They must, however, be constantly
taught how this can be achieved. Instruction in the cause and prevention of dental disease
should feature in every health education programme and be adapted to the needs and
age of the recipient. Such a programme must include mention of dietary control,
oral hygiene, the importance of early diagnosis and regular dental examinations,
and the measures that the dentist can take to prevent dental caries. Simple but
interesting explanation of the methods used by the dentist during treatment may
often remove the 'fear of the unknown' and produce a willing and co-operative patient
from the fearful dental rebel.
At the end of May a Dental Health Campaign was inaugurated among the primary
school children in the borough with the slogan - "We give Dental Health Stamps".
The objects of the Campaign were:
1. the improvement of the dental health of the children by instruction and
propaganda on established lines, combined with the incentive to attend for
treatment provided by the reward of dental health stamps for specific
items of dental treatment;
2. to provide an exercise in dental health education in which all the dental
profession in the area would be involved; i.e. the general dental practitioner,
the hospital dental surgeon and the school dental officer;
3. to provide means whereby a simple statistical analysis of where children
in the borough go for dental treatment might be obtained.
The form of the campaign was as follows:-
(a) The campaign commenced during the week May 23 - 27 when every child in
each school was given a dental health lecture in which the principles of dental
hygiene were outlined and the idea of dental health stamps explained.
(b) After these lectures had taken place in each school, teachers were asked
to distribute to each child (i) a dental health stamp collecting card (ii) an open
letter to the child's parents explaining the scheme and (iii) a copy of the Oral
Hygiene Service's small bathroom poster - "4 Rules for Good Teeth".
(c) At the same time, there were distributed to schools adequate quantities
of dental health education posters, pamphlets and teachers' handbooks on teaching
dental health.
90.