Thank you for being part of the KinderSmile Foundation village. We hope that you and your family are in good health. Your continued support of our Dental Homes of Bloomfield, Newark, and Trenton has been truly appreciated!
The mission of KinderSmile Foundation is to provide underserved children and their families with access to comprehensive dental care and educate children and their families on the importance of dental hygiene. We envision a future where every child has access to a dentist and preventable dental diseases are eradicated.
KinderSmile Perinatal Health and Wellness Program breaks the dangerous cycle of untreated dental diseases by empowering uninsured mothers, from pregnancy to three years postpartum, with informative, personal, culturally-sensitive training about the importance of maternal oral health and its impact on the developing fetus and young children. Graduates of the training program earn a full year of free dental care to restore their smiles to full functionality and painlessness. The program benefits at-risk uninsured expectant and recently postpartum mothers, and has been translated to Spanish and Arabic.
In the educational portion of the program, we emphasize the changes caused by tobacco, drugs, and alcohol in the mother’s oral cavity, and in the unborn fetus. We teach about the link to cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and gastric changes. We emphasize infants and children’s oral hygiene practices, empowering the women to nourish a new generation of children free of Early Childhood Caries and rampant decay. Knowledge gained empowers mothers, the matriarchs of families, to help eliminate dental caries, the #1 epidemic of economically disadvantaged children.
Guadalupe was a very special 13-year old mom who was identified by KinderSmile Community Oral Health Center front desk patient coordinators as someone who can truly benefit from the educational portion of the program. Although she was insured by Medicaid for her dental care, we welcomed her to the classes. Between her pre-evaluation and post-evaluation, Guadalupe proudly improved her score from 30% to 100%, and became a proud graduate!
Juana, a mother of three boys and a baby girl, joined PHWP and became one of our most engaged moms, offering anecdotes from her own motherhood experiences about the pain and shame that her boys endured due to severe tooth decay and Early Childhood Caries resulted by lack of knowledge about healthy habits. She was determined that things will be different for her baby, as she joyfully participated in the class.
Guadalupe and Juana taught us the importance of empowering young moms with the tools and knowledge they need to positively impact their families’ oral health and total wellbeing.
Black and Hispanic groups are uninsured at higher rates. KSF strives to reduce racial disparities and inequities in oral health care access by linking the mothers and their young children to a barrier-free Dental Home. Aside from insurance status or lack thereof, other barriers in access to care for underserved communities include lack of transportation or child care, lack of convenient hours for working parents, language barriers, and fear due to immigration status.
KSF’s Founder and CEO Dr. Nicole McGrath-Barnes, tirelessly works to raise awareness of inequities in oral health care access, due the dire need to develop oral health equity in New Jersey. She was invited to First Lady of New Jersey Tammy Murphy’s Black Infant and Maternal Health Summit for collaboration with leaders regarding the systemic factors of NJ’s racial gap. KinderSmile Perinatal Health and Wellness Program is perfectly aligned with Ms. Murphy’s Healthy Women, Healthy Families initiative and Nurture NJ program, an awareness campaign committed to addressing the healthcare inequities in high-risk communities that impact maternal and infant health
Since we initiated our Perinatal Health and Wellness Program in 2016 we have identified, educated, and provided comprehensive dental care to 226 perinatal mothers at KinderSmile Community Oral Health Center Bloomfield. In April we were proud to launch the program at KinderSmile Community Oral Health Center Trenton, where it is reported that 58% of expectant mothers receive late or no prenatal health care, and 66% of the families are led by single mothers. In Trenton, 17 mothers already graduated the educational portion of the program, and nearly 40 uninsured mothers, mostly undocumented, have been referred to KSF through our partnerships with Capital Health, Children’s Home Society of NJ Program, and others. Crucially, our program provides a link to a permanent Dental Home to the mothers and their children, where preventive and comprehensive care can be obtained for years to come. #ItTakesAVillageKSF