About the Project

In order to educate the population about the importance of seeing a dentist, and getting dental health screenings, it would be beneficial to include two aspects of the Healthy People 2030 campaign: oral cancer detection, and periodontal disease screenings. By implementing these two interrelated objectives together, Community HealthEd would be able to most effectively reach, and identify with, its audience. This project on oral health screenings covers the relationships between periodontal disease and broader issues like diabetes and regional disadvantages in finding and maintaining dental (as well as overall) health. Each of these issues  has either a manifestation or direct link to the oral cavity. Further, by integrating cancer screenings, which often go hand in hand with periodontal disease, we can broaden our target audience and gain more readers. One important consideration is that in many communities and situations, people are more likely to go to an urgent care or physician than a dental office. However, in the case that a person with severe periodontitis or lesions in the mouth seeks dental care, a dentist could perform screenings that could benefit the long-term outcomes of patients. This is most important in patient populations that need emergency dental care but do not regularly see a physician. In other scenarios, a patient might regularly go to the dentist and not realize that they have the early stages of a disease, but through routine oral screenings they could find the issue and treat it before other more obvious symptoms manifest. In part, the educational value of creating a project based on oral health screenings lies in readers’ willingness to go to the dentist for their general health concerns. Further, in raising awareness for the importance of these screenings, patients may also be more likely to ask their provider to check their oral cavities for certain diseases or signs of illness.