Oral Health Intervention for Caregivers of Children Presenting for Dental Surgery

Too many young children, particularly those living in poverty, present for dental surgery under anesthesia - an expensive, potentially dangerous, short-term fix that often results in recurring oral health disease and subsequent surgeries. Dr. Helen Lee, an anesthesiologist, and Dr. Joanna Buscemi, a clinical health psychologist, recognized that to decrease need for surgeries, caregivers need resources and support to build their skills and knowledge around managing their child's oral health. After 5 years of relationship-building, publishing preliminary qualitative work, and building a team with the appropriate skills and knowledge, they developed a grant application to develop and test a parenting intervention for caregivers of preschool- aged children presenting for dental surgery. With support from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the team created the PROTECT intervention with a focus on providing caregivers with parenting and behavioral tools to help improve tooth brushing and lower added sugar intake while simultaneously addressing social determinants of health that make behavior change more difficult. Community health workers will engage with caregivers for 6 months following the child's surgery to deliver PROTECT and support parents in behavioral change. A surgical event is a unique opportunity to change behaviors in systemically oppressed families that have manifested a need for behavior change. This intervention will meet caregivers needs at a critical time when risk disease recurrence intersects with a desire to change. This work has the potential to not only improve oral health of entire households but may also have a concomitant effect on parallel diseases, such as pediatric obesity.