Children-Teaching-Children: A PA student-led oral health education program for at-risk youth in Chicago

The CDC reports that children ages 5-19 from low-income families are twice as likely to have dental caries compared to children from higher-income households. An oral health education program focusing on improving the health of youth living in at-risk communities in Chicago serves to prevent oral disease in populations with known oral health disparities. Chicago Youth Programs (CYP), founded in 1995, offers services in three underserved communities which have some of the highest rates of youth living in poverty (86% of children under the age of 18). The PA students at Northwestern University propose a program for the creation of a teachable oral health education curriculum based on the principles of Bright Smiles, Bright Futures and Cavity Free Kids which will become integrated into the Children-Teaching-Children (CTC) program at CYP. PA students will provide four, one-hour education sessions for 8th through 12th grade student teachers. The first two sessions will focus on the curriculum while the latter two will serve as preparation for teaching the course. The student teachers will then be responsible for delivering the oral health curriculum to groups of elementary and middle school children over the spring semester. This program hopes to provide the student teachers with the knowledge and skills to present an oral health initiative, while also supporting a sustainable curriculum for CYP to provide oral health education to elementary and middle school students.