Essex Oral Health Programme wins Clinical Dentistry Award

Community Dental Services CIC (CDS)’s Oral Health Improvement Team have been recognised in another national award, winning the Local Oral Health Initiative in the 2024 Clinical Dentistry Awards.

The award-winning initiative is a programme in Essex schools where young peer-to-peer oral health champions are recruited and trained to encourage oral health among their young peers. The bespoke training programme promotes good oral health in primary schools and gives pupils direct responsibility for managing their own health. Using a new and innovative peer-led approach, pupils in years 3-6 are trained by CDS’s OHI team to be Oral Health Champions. The young Champions deliver training sessions within the classroom or during assembly, offer support and empower their peers to improve and take ownership of their own oral health.

Data gathered has shown 100% of children participating understand the benefits of brushing twice a day and the key oral health message of ‘spit don’t rinse’.

Helen Paisley, CDS Chief Executive said: “Tooth decay is a preventable disease and sadly, we are still seeing too many children hospitalised for dental care under general anaesthetic. It is really important that we find simple, innovative and imaginative ways to engage with children at a young age to deliver oral health messages so they can acquire the good oral health habits that last a lifetime. This Peer-to-Peer led approach is a simple and highly effective way to reach children and we look forward to rolling out the concept in other areas.”

Ed Garratt OBE, Chief Executive, NHS Suffolk and North East Essex Integrated Care Board (ICB) said: “Congratulations to Community Dental Services CIC on their well-deserved award. We know that in dentistry, as in other areas of the NHS, commissioning services to educate the public and prevent health conditions from developing in the first place is key to instilling good habits and achieving good health outcomes.

Some children won’t know how to look after their teeth without such programmes taking place in schools. We hope that the work we are funding today will have an impact on generations to come and eventually wipe out dental issues relating to decay.”

Working in partnership with Essex County Council and funded by Suffolk and North East Essex Integrated Care Board, CDS established the Peer Led Education Programme in primary schools across Colchester and Tendring to tackle tooth decay in children. CDS deliver the programme in primary schools identified as having the highest dental needs by the Essex Public Health team in partnership with Essex Child and Family Wellbeing Service.

Professor Nick Barker, Clinical Lead for Dentistry, NHS Suffolk and North East Essex ICB said: “If we teach children how to look after their teeth and gums, it will help to set them up for good oral health for life, improve their general wellbeing and make them more confident in engaging with people around them. We would expect to see a reduction in the number of children, and subsequently adults, requiring urgent dental procedures as the network of Oral Health Champions in schools grows.”

The Essex County Council Public Health team said: “The rise we’ve seen in children having tooth extractions is preventable. Through this work we are helping children to understand how to brush their teeth and to do it regularly, avoiding many more children having to have their teeth removed.”