The local health unit’s fluoride varnish program will remain in area schools for at least the next year, a public health official recently confirmed.
Dr. Robert Hawkins, dental consultant at Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health, said the seven area schools that received the program last year will continue to receive it this year.
“The only change I guess from previous years is that instead of doing three applications of the fluoride varnish during the school year we’ll be giving two applications … the evidence-based literature supports doing two to three as being affective,” Hawkins said.
“We’re not seeing this as making a difference in terms of effectiveness.”
The fluoride varnish program, which targets students’ urgent dental care needs, has been completely funded through the province’s Healthy Smiles Ontario program since its inception nine years ago.
However, earlier this year the funding model changed.
“That’s based on the provincial decision of how the money for Healthy Smiles Ontario will be spent, so they have rules, regulations … and it didn’t include programs such as the fluoride varnish program for high-risk schools,” Hawkins said.
“That was a provincial decision and we informed them of this program and what it was doing and the benefit.”
Public health has seen positive results from the program.
“We have done an evaluation in the past and shown first hand that it’s working and [public health] felt strongly that it was beneficial to continue the program,” said Hawkins.
The program began in Centre Peel Public School in Drayton in the 2007-08 school year.
Since then the program has been rolled out in six other schools – Victoria Cross in Mount Forest is the only other school in Wellington County – but at this point there are no plans to expand further this year.
“At this time we wouldn’t consider adding one for this coming school year,” Hawkins said.
“In the future that’s a possibility, but it would be funding dependent.”
The fluoride varnish program is free to every student at the school as long as they have parental permission.
During a varnish session professionals apply or “paint” the varnish onto the child’s teeth.
“Very little material is applied onto the teeth, it’s just wiped onto the front of the teeth so there’s no risk of young kids gaging and it’s a lot quicker than sitting in the chair for four minutes with suction in your mouth and all that stuff,” Hawkins said.
Last year there were 1,049 applications in Wellington County, 905 in Guelph and 759 in Dufferin.
When the program started at Centre Peel there were 66 students with urgent needs and by 2014-15 that number had dropped to 11.
“In terms of this one I think there’s a lot of benefit for the dollar that we’ve seen first hand here and that’s been reported in the literature,” Hawkins said.
“So you know this, in my opinion, is the way public health dental should be going as far as using money in a targeted manner … we’re committed to doing that.
“I think that it’s good when we’re identifying a need and we have something that we can meet the need with that has the evidence behind it and that we see firsthand the results.”
