Grant Promotes Oral Health Among Older Adults

Chicago-based Oral Health America (OHA) recently received a $50,000 grant from the Delta Dental of Minnesota Foundation. The grant was awarded to OHA’s Tooth Wisdom ®: Get Smart About Your Mouth—an oral health education workshop for community- dwelling older adults in the United States. This workshop educates older adults about the importance of oral health and provides strategies for successfully maintaining a daily oral hygiene regimen.

The grant will enable OHA to expand its training of dental hygienists who lead the Tooth Wisdom: Get Smart About Your Mouth workshops. To meet evolving oral health care needs, additional emphasis will be placed on educating dental hygienists on cultural competency, health education theory, and geriatric oral health care. The goal of the workshops is to help the older adult population prevent more serious oral health problems in the future.

From Dimensions of Dental Hygiene. January 2017;15(1):11.