Updates on the Head Start National Center on Health



Updates on the Head Start National Center on Health

The National Center on Health (NCH) has put forward guiding principles and a strategic framework to steer project activities to help Head Start staff promote optimal oral health services for pregnant women, infants, and children enrolled in Head Start and their families.

Guiding Principles

• Promote evidence-informed, practice-based, developmentally appropriate, and culturally sensitive messages, materials, and services to help Head Start staff meet the program performance standards specific to oral health.

• Focus on prevention and early intervention.

• Preserve what works while promoting innovation.

• Leverage public/private partnerships.

• Communicate and coordinate with health professionals (e.g., dentists, dental hygienists, physicians, nurse practitioners, nutritionists), child care professionals, and representatives from government agencies, organizations, and programs.

Framework

The framework for NCH oral health activities includes disease prevention and management, access to care, and systems integration. NCH aims to promote advances in the way that oral health is perceived and how oral health knowledge is acted upon as well as in the way that oral health education and preventive and treatment services are delivered.

Disease Prevention and Management

• Develop and disseminate oral health messages and materials.

• Incorporate oral health content into other health-related messages and materials.

• Provide education and training, and promote awareness of public education campaigns to Head Start staff to share information with Head Start participants and their families. Content may include:

• Increasing awareness and understanding of the importance of oral health risk assessment, examination, preventive measures, education (reducing disease risk factors and promoting protective factors [e.g., fluorides, oral hygiene practices, feeding and eating practices]), treatment, and follow-up care for pregnant women, infants, and children enrolled in Head Start

• Emphasizing parents’ important role in ensuring children’s oral health

• Collect and promote best and promising practices and programs

Access to Care

• Promote an adequate and effective oral health work force to meet the needs of pregnant women, infants, and children enrolled in Head Start.

• Promote establishment and continuation of comprehensive oral health services through a dental home, starting in infancy.

• Promote coordination of community support services (e.g., case management, transportation, child care, insurance enrollment) to help families access oral health services on a consistent basis.

• Promote sound policies that support access, utilization, and equity in oral health.

• Collect and promote best and promising practices and programs.

Systems Integration

• Promote the integration of oral health services into other health, education, and social service systems and policies.

• Provide technical assistance to facilitate improvements in data collection and analysis to monitor changes in access to oral health care and oral health status.

• Collect and promote best and promising practices and programs.

An oral health workgroup is assisting ASTDD and the National Maternal and Child Oral Health Resource Center, the NCH oral health leads, to develop activities to accomplish these tasks. They held their first meeting in Washington, DC on February 6, 2012. To provide education to Head Start staff and share information about NCH activities, presentations were given at the Region X Head Start Leadership Summit on March 14, during the National Head Start Association Annual Meeting on April 18, at the National Oral Health Conference on April 30, and will be given at the Birth to Three Institute on June 13. We are in the process of soliciting feedback from a variety of stakeholders, including state oral health programs, Head Start state collaboration offices, and state Head Start associations about current Dental Home Initiative activities, lessons learned and structure to help guide future NCH oral health activities. We also are collecting examples of successful Head Start oral health programs already in existence in states.

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