ASDOH students develop program to have kids teach kids about oral health
Posted: October 10, 2012
Can a sixth-grade student help a child who is in first or second grade learn the principles of good oral health? That is what three ATSU Arizona School of Dentistry & Oral Health (ATSU-ASDOH) students proposed in their Dentistry in the Community project, Teach One, Show One. Nipa Patel, Robert MacArthur, and Lucas Allen, all ATSU-ASDOH D4 students, developed the Teach One, Show One project with Mary Busch serving as their ATSU-ASDOH faculty advisor.
What started as an idea in 2010, Teach One, Show One, in a collaborative partnership with Mesa Community College (MCC) dental hygiene program students and Mesa school district’s Taft Elementary School, is now a an ongoing program at Taft.
The Teach One phase involved educating Taft fifth- and sixth-grade students on oral hygiene principles. During the Show One phase, the fifth- and sixth-grade students explained what they learned about oral hygiene to students in the first and second grades. In this manner the principles of oral hygiene were taught to the children in the “language” of children. Oral hygiene materials (i.e., toothbrush, toothpaste, and floss) were also distributed to children in an ATSU water bottle.
“We (the three project leaders and 12 dental hygiene students) came to Taft Elementary in mid-November 2011 to deliver our model of oral health education,” said Allen. “It went better than expected and was well received by the children and teachers. Because our project went so well, we were invited to return to the school in April 2012.”
“When we returned we orally quizzed the children on oral health principles and techniques, and they remembered 95% of the material the team taught them in November,” added MacArthur.
Because of the program’s success and with the backing of Taft’s principal, Russ Heath, ATSU-ASDOH students and MCC’s dental hygiene program students are going to continue coming to Taft twice each year to continue the working relationship with the children and add a sustainable component to the Teach One, Show One model.
“From the moment our group came together in 2010, we all agreed that we wanted the project to be something that was not only impactful but also sustainable,” said MacArthur.
“My passion is global health, and I wanted to be able to work on a project that I could take globally to teach children anywhere in the world,” added Patel. The Teach One, Show One model has this capability.”
The project was recently honored on September 20 by the Arizona Public Health Association. The Teach One, Show One project was awarded the HEMMY, an award that is given for a groundbreaking piece of educational material or project related to public health.