Cavity Free Futures Project Summary:
Cavity Free Futures (CFF) is designed to provide people who work in a variety of patient support roles with the tools they need to help families stop the dental caries disease process and deliver on the promise of a cavity free future. CFF is designed to be used by individuals in an adjunctive role to clinical dental care who can support the oral health of families in various community settings such as community health workers, medical team members, school nurses, early childhood care providers, etc.
To manage dental caries successfully, we must consider the multi-factorial nature of the condition. Other chronic health conditions, such as diabetes, are not managed with a one-time treatment. Rather, the patient learns about the contributing factors to the disease process, and in the case of diabetes, the patient is offered support for modifying their diet and activities to maintain healthy glucose levels and minimize the impact of this chronic disease. A chronic disease management approach shifts the paradigm from providers simply delivering treatment procedures and telling the patient what to do, to patients/families playing an active role in the process of controlling their chronic condition. CFF uses guided cavity risk reduction to help families identify risks and ways to manage them, and encourages setting feasible goals to reduce the impacts of the chronic condition of dental caries.
This project was inspired by conversations highlighting the essential role of non-clinical team members and the value they bring in managing dental caries. Members of the Children’s Oral Health Network of Maine had already been exploring this approach when west-coast colleagues described their experience with home visitors. Their findings concluded that oral health education was actually more effective when delivered by community-based peers rather than by dental professionals. It is essential to make treatments, such as silver diamine fluoride, more available through school- and community-based settings; however, without caregiver education about the disease process and the risk factors that drive it, children will simply return with new decay in other teeth. Parents and caregivers have not had the opportunity to learn the science behind dental disease and how to stop it, and it is unfair to expect them to be able to manage this chronic disease successfully without that information. Cavity Free Futures aims to give them the information to stop not just the treated cavity but also the active progressive disease process in their child’s mouth.
With a generous investment from NAPD, the foundational elements of this strategy have now been built. Prototypes of the curriculum, program guides/materials, and training tools are drafted and actively being field tested by three partners - a HeadStart program, a school-based health center, and a community health worker organization. Prototypes and materials will be refined based on their feedback, and a full pilot plan will be developed for implementation in 2026 to expand the reach of this valuable new intervention tool that has potential to stop dental disease in its tracks.
