The 100 Million Mouths Campaign (100MMC) is an initiative, which will create fifty oral health education champions over the next decade, one in each state, to work with health profession schools and programs to integrate oral health into their curricula to bridge gaps in oral health access.
The goal of the 100MMC is to recruit and train health professionals in each state to engage with primary care training sites to develop oral health curricula that will be sustainable and has a health equity component. Champions are taught to reach out to medical and osteopathic schools, physician assistant, nurse practitioner, and midwifery schools, as well as pediatrics, med-peds, internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, and family medicine residencies. They are taught to use existing national and state resources, and to partner with local and state experts such as the state dental director, department of public health, and local academic and community-based dentists and dental hygienists. Our champions train faculty in the health schools to carry on the oral health curricula thereby creating a system that will generate future PCPs that can engage their patients and improve the oral health of at least 100 million mouths over the next decade.
In 2020, the 100MMC launched by selecting and training 5 champions in Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Missouri, and Tennessee. In 2021, we selected and trained an additional 9 champions from Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Ohio. Additionally, in 2022, 8 additional states were added: Alaska, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
These states were chosen based on a formula that showed they have the greatest oral health access issues and needs. Champions represent a range of personal and professional backgrounds including physician assistants, nurse practitioners, pediatricians, family doctors, med-peds, dental hygienists and a pediatric dentist.
Current funding for the 100MMC is from the CareQuest Institute for Oral Health.