Big smiles: Expanding oral health care for infants, toddlers, and pre-schoolers in Chicago

Access Community Health Network (ACCESS), is a leader in innovating practices and providing cutting-edge services which enable our patients to have a stable, high-quality medical home. ACCESS, a network of federally-qualified health centers, became positioned to address pediatric oral health in 2007 by partnering with the Illinois Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics in a project to provide oral health screenings, fluoride varnish applications, and education to our pediatric patients. Our Big Smiles project tackles the problems of poor oral health among low-income children on four fronts: access, surveillance, prevention, and education. ACCESS' community health centers are well-positioned to provide these services given our roots in the community and importance we place on ongoing professional education and prevention.

A two-step training (including didactic and clinical components) and Big Smiles toolkit empower primary care providers and health center staff to offer selected oral health services to our pediatric patients that address problems early and provide culturally- and linguistically-appropriate caregiver education for maximizing children's ongoing oral health.

We will discuss several program components: training format; site support and resources; parent and community outreach; physician buy-in; and evaluation. Originally piloted at 5 ACCESS sites, the model developed has been replicated to 15 sites. By building this solid infrastructure for providing selected pediatric oral health services to our patients, we are able to increase the capacity of our patients and families to sustain good oral health, thereby increasing their overall physical well-being.