CILCK TO APPLY TO BE A CHAMPION
You Are the Tip of the Iceberg As an Oral Health Champion
What is a champion?
This is you! You're an administrator or outstanding educator at a nursing school, medical school, primary care residency, or health professions program.
- Your duty as an educator: As a Champion, you will be provided curricular resources to enhance your program and better prepare your students to address oral health.
- Your network: As a Champion, you will connect with other programs, allowing you to reach more professionals and patients.
- Your toolbox: If selected, you will be provided a stipend and additional money for educational expenses, as well as access to our network of experts in your field.
One Professional’s Reach: How many patients can one professional reach?
Meet Emily
- Emily is a Family Nurse Practitioner at State University Medical Center. She earned her MSN-FNP degree from State University last year.
- Emily has 2,300 patients under her care and will see about 20 patients today.
- Around one in four adults will experience tooth decay in their lifetime and around half of adults will experience gum disease. Emily will more than likely encounter patients with oral health concerns every day.
- Emily's oral health training will give her tools to reach over a thousand of her patients.
100 Million Mouths: Putting it together
As one professional, Emily can make a huge difference in her community thanks to oral health education. Let's think bigger. How far can one champion reach?
How your impact magnifies:
- One champion reaches several institutions.
- Those institutions have thousands of graduates.
- Thousands of graduates bring their oral health knowledge to their workplace and share it with their colleagues.
- Thousands of primary care professionals reach millions of mouths.
Oral Health in Your Profession
- Emergency Care: 1.6 million emergency room visits can be referred to dental clinics a year.
- Sexual Wellness: Eighty percent of sexually active adults will contract HPV in their lifetime. Fifty percent of oral cancer cases are related to HPV.
- Healthy Aging: One in four older adults have lost all of their teeth and require dental appliances. Most older Americans take over-the-counter medications, putting them at risk for dry mouth and tooth decay.
- Healthy Children: 50 million hours of school is missed due to oral health problems every year, nationwide. Many children also report decreasing social activity due to insecurity about their teeth.
Join Us
Become an Oral Health Champion! The 100 Million Mouths Project is an initiative which will create fifty oral health champions over the next decade, one in each state, training the champions to work with health profession schools to integrate oral health into their curricula to bridge gaps in oral health access.