Brushing your teeth may seem like a straightforward process — squeeze some toothpaste on a toothbrush, run it under water and you’re ready to go.
However, a pilot program running in kindergartens across Victoria’s Loddon Mallee region will take the water element out of tooth brushing, to try and improve rural preschoolers’ oral health.
“La Trobe uni has been working really closely to look at improving children’s oral health and it’s a big part of what we do as early years professionals — we look after children’s health and wellbeing,” said Belinda Schultz from Shine Bright Early Years Management.
“It’s a really nice fit with what we do in supporting families.”
The not-for-profit community organisation oversees 40 kindergartens in both large and small rural towns across central and north west Victoria, including Bendigo, Mildura, Swan Hill, Kyabram and Rochester.
Training for its early childhood educators was rolled out online and the program will run throughout terms three and Four.
“We’ve had a program for many years called Smiles for Miles where we’ll talk about things like teeth brushing, but this is much more structured and I think it will be easy to measure,” Ms Schultz said.
Ms Schultz said running the program came at no cost to families, with the toothbrushes and toothpaste provided by Dental Health Services Victoria.
Don’t rinse after brushing
The dry tooth brushing program will involve children at each participating centre brushing their teeth as a group for two minutes before spitting the toothpaste into paper towel.
“One of the things that does is make sure that the children are not rinsing their mouths after they brush their teeth … because that washes the fluoride off, and many of the towns in rural Victoria don’t have fluoride in their water,” said public health researcher from La Trobe Rural Health School Virginia Dickson-Swift.
“Getting fluoride onto kids’ teeth is really important.”
“It’s got a social element to it as well, there’ll be a song playing or a little timer, a small amount of low fluoride toothpaste will be put onto the toothbrush and the early childhood educator will supervise,” said Professor Dickson-Swift.
“In an early childhood setting the focus is not really on brushing technique.
“It’s really about habit formation and thinking about improving oral health — brushing your teeth is a really important part of that.”
She said more than 50 per cent of Victorian children aged up to 12 living in rural areas with non-fluoridated water had higher than average rates of decayed, missing and filled teeth.
That increased to 78 per cent for rural children up to the age of five.
Lifelong Dental Health
Only 56 per cent of children under five years have been to the dentist, according to the Australian Dental Association’s latest Children and Young People Oral Health Tracker figures.
Paediatric dentist and senior lecturer at the Melbourne Dental School Mihiri Silva said it was recommended children first visit a dentist at 12 months of age, around the time their first tooth emerges.
