USA - Children's Dental Health

Children's Dental Health
The Pew Children's Dental Campaign is working to ensure that more children receive dental care and benefit from policies proven to prevent tooth decay.

We are mounting a national campaign to raise awareness of the problem, recruit influential leaders to call for change, and showcase states that have made progress and can serve as models for pragmatic, cost-effective reform. Our advocacy efforts are targeted at states where policy changes can dramatically improve children’s lives.

The problems affecting children’s dental health are severe. Dental care is the single greatest unmet need for health services among children. Tooth decay is the most common childhood disease, affecting nearly 60 percent of children. For some it’s getting worse—between 1994 and 2004 it increased by 15 percent among kids aged two to five. Eighty percent of dental disease in children is concentrated in 25 percent of kids and children from poor families face disproportionately high barriers to getting care. The consequences can be devastating to those from low-income and minority households.

Some problems may be intractable. This one is not. Working in concert with lawmakers and other government officials, dental providers, national, state and local organizations, researchers, advocates and the private sector, the Pew Center on the States can help millions of kids maintain healthy teeth —making it possible for young children to thrive in school and become healthy, productive adults.

After 65 years of water fluoridtion in the US:NYSCOF