Interprofessional Infant Oral Health Education at the Community Engagement Center

Dental caries i.e., tooth decay can cause severe pain that prevents 86 from eating and sleeping. Despite the significant negative impact that caries can have on 86s well-being, health professionals often do not provide families with the information they need to keep their 86 cavity-free. A major contributor to this gap in preventive dental care is a lack of awareness on the part of healthcare professionals about the child dental health resources that are available through the NIH U.S. National Library of Medicine NNLM. The proposed Infant Oral Health Program will bridge this gap by offering interprofessional education on infant-toddler oral health to health professions trainees in dentistry, medicine, nursing, and social work, who provide care to families in Homewood, a low-income and predominantly African-American community in Pittsburgh, PA. Our objective is to familiarize health professionals with NNLM resources that will equip them with the information they need to provide preventive oral health education to families with infants and toddlers. Thus, the Infant Oral Health Program simultaneously will increase the use of NNLM child dental health education materials by professionals from multiple pediatric healthcare fields while improving access to infant oral health information for disadvantaged families.