Oral Health
Oral Health
Why Is This Important?
You cannot be truly healthy without good dental health. Dental health is important for obvious reasons like eating, speaking, feeling good about your smile, and being able to find a job.
Dental health is also important for overall health. For example, people who have diabetes are at greater risk for dental disease, and having dental disease makes it more difficult to control blood sugar levels. Poor dental health has also been linked to heart disease and stroke.
What We Do
Oral Health is an essential part of a healthy life. Tooth decay (cavities) is the single most common chronic disease of childhood, occurring five to eight times as much as asthma. Poor oral health has recently been linked to heart disease, low birth weight, diabetes, and other chronic diseases. Despite the reduction in cases of decay in recent years, nationally more than half of all children have cavities by the time they are in second grade. By the time students finish high school, about 80 percent have cavities. Dental decay cannot be reversed unless it is stopped early. Luckily, most dental disease is preventable and Vermont ranks high among other states for people who access dental services. 60 percent of the children surveyed in grades one to three were cavity free. 64 percent of eight year old children had sealants on at least one of their permanent molars. 85 percent of children in grades one to three required preventative care only.
Who We Serve
We serve all Vermonters
How We Impact
Vermonters cannot be truly healthy without good dental health. We promote dental health and reduce dental disease for all Vermonters.
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