Parents as experts in community-based partnerships to prevent early childhood caries

“Taking Care of Baby Teeth” was a 2-year pilot project of the Northwest / Alaska Center to Reduce Oral Health Disparities. The project was motivated by 3 lines of evidence: national surveillance data that shows the prevalence of dental caries is on the decline in all ages except the very young; knowledge that regular brushing with fluoride toothpaste can mitigate the disease processes that lead to early childhood caries; and survey data showing many parents are not meeting professionals' recommendations to brush young children's teeth twice a day beginning with the eruption of the first tooth.

Baby Teeth was a community-based participatory research project designed to learn what rural, low-income parents know and do to care for their young children's teeth, and what would help them establish a habit of twice daily parent-child tooth brushing.

Community parents were included in every step of the research: as members of the Steering Committee charged with “steering” the research procedures, as expert informants (in one-to-one interviews and focus groups), as interviewers, and as the project director. Data collected from this qualitative research approach was used to create, with continued parental input, materials and a parent education program held at Centralia Community College for parents of children 6 to 60 months of age.

This presentation describes the steps in creating a community-based preventive intervention, specifically parents' responses to the collaborative process and to the resulting “Baby Teeth” program.