Dental Trips Emphasized for Young Children

Dental Trips Emphasized for Young Children

Low-income children are not getting good dental care, even though many of them have coverage through the state. Shelley Rouillard would like to do something about that. Rouillard, deputy director of benefits and quality monitoring at the Managed Risk Medical Insurance Board (MRMIB), is leading an effort at MRMIB to get more young children to see the dentist -- as early in their lives as possible, she said. "Studies show that the younger the child (who gets dental care) the less it costs over their life for dental services," Rouillard said. "So we want the percentage of kids who see a dentist to change, and we're targeting the youngest kids. We'd like the children ages 0 to 3 to start being seen."

Low-income children are not getting good dental care, even though many of them have coverage through the state. Shelley Rouillard would like to do something about that.

Rouillard, deputy director of benefits and quality monitoring at the Managed Risk Medical Insurance Board (MRMIB), is leading an effort at MRMIB to get more young children to see the dentist — as early in their lives as possible, she said.

“Studies show that the younger the child (who gets dental care) the less it costs over their life for dental services,” Rouillard said. “So we want the percentage of kids who see a dentist to change, and we’re targeting the youngest kids. We’d like the children ages 0 to 3 to start being seen.”

Many low-income children don’t get dental checkups, and have diets high in sugar, Rouillard said. Many infants and toddlers sip on fruit drinks from bottles and sippy cups, setting the stage for drinking lots of sodas among youngsters and teens.

“Once kids are past 7, it’s hard to change their pattern,” Rouillard said. “When you look over a larger population, getting to them when they’re young gives you the biggest bang for the buck.”

The oral health program at MRMIB, called Healthy Families Healthy Smiles, attacks the utilization problem in several different ways:

“All of these efforts are important,” Rouillard said, “because you have to attack this issue from all angles. It’s a synergistic effect. I mean, you’re impacting behavior here, and that takes coming at it from all sides.”

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