Overview

Local boards of health are responsible for assuring the provision of adequate public health services in their communities, including protecting the public from oral health risks.

A board of health’s role is to:

• Assess a community’s oral health needs and concerns.
• Develop or recommend policies, procedures, and programs to meet a community’s oral health needs.

Oral health means much more than healthy teeth. It means being free from chronic oral-facial pain conditions, oral and pharyngeal (throat) cancers, oral soft tissue legions, birth defects such as cleft lip and palate, and many other diseases and disorders that affect the oral, dental, and craniofacial tissues. Oral health is essential to general health, and must be included in the provision of health care and design of community programs.

The Association of State and Territorial Dental Directors (ASTDD) Best Practices Project and CDCs Community Guide to Preventive Services both report strong evidence to implement (1) community water fluoridation and (2) school-based dental sealants.  

Community Water Fluoridation: Over the past 60 years, the damage caused by tooth decay has been drastically reduced, primarily through the use of fluoride. The most cost-effective way to deliver the benefits of fluoride to all residents of a community is through water fluoridation—that is, adjusting the fluoride in the public water supply to the right level for decay prevention.

• ASTDD Best Practice Approaches for State and Community Oral Health Programs: Use of Fluoride: Community Water Fluoridation
• DA’s Model Fluoridation Ordinance  
• Community Guide to Preventive Services  

School-Based Dental Sealants: Dental sealants are a plastic coating applied to the chewing surfaces of the back teeth to prevent cavities among schoolchildren. Sealants significantly reduce a child’s risk for having untreated cavities.

Although progress has been made toward the national Healthy People 2010 objective, which calls for half of all U.S. children to have dental sealants, only about one-third of children aged 6–19 do.

• ASTDD Best Practice Approaches for State and Community Oral Health Programs:School-Based Dental Sealant Programs
• Community Guide to Preventive Services

Centers for Disease Control Oral Health Resources: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the federal agency with primary responsibility for supporting state- and community-based programs to prevent oral disease, promoting oral health nationwide, and fostering applied research to enhance oral disease prevention in community settings. Resources available at www.cdc.gov/oralhealth.