Share Your Smile Campaign Shines a Light on Dental Health Disparity

Millions of families across America face barriers to access the dental care they need to be healthy. With support from DentaQuest and Sun Life, hundreds of oral health advocates, educators, and dental health professionals joined us to spread awareness about the dental health disparity that exists in the United States.

The Share Your Smile Campaign launched during National Children’s Dental Health Month with the aim to help others understand why this issue is important and how they can make a difference to help children grow up with healthy smiles.

The campaign included free, downloadable educational materials that were used to reach people in vulnerable communities across the United States. Advocates from Canada, Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom, and Slovenia also accessed the free resources. As of April 2023, more than 92,000 kids and caregivers have learned that smiles are important with the materials.

Campaign participants also had access to a social media kit that includes sample text and graphics for five topics:

1. Why Smiling is Important
2. Barriers to Dental Care
3. 4 Ways Your Child’s Smile Shapes Their Future
4. Communities With Higher Rates of Decay
5. Careers in Dentistry

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The downloadable materials and social media kit are available year-round at ShareYourSmileCampaign.org. A digital version of the educational materials can also be viewed at ShareYourSmileCampaign.com.

Kids ages 10 and younger were also invited to join the campaign by encouraging the world to smile with their favorite joke! Kids’ Joke Contest video submissions were received from around the U.S. and three finalists were chosen by the staff at America’s ToothFairy:

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The $250 Grand Prize was won by Nygel James, age 5, of Cherokee, North Carolina.

In an effort to reach communities where language can be a barrier to receiving oral health education, a portion of campaign funding is being used to translate educational materials into languages other than English. To access our current selection of multilingual educational materials, visit our Resources page.

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Be a part of future awareness campaigns! Sign up to receive campaign alerts.

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Interested in sponsoring a future campaign? Contact Jill at info@ncohf.org.

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