The COHC meets quarterly to provide leadership to increase oral health education, prevention, and treatment services to school-aged children. The coalition has formed working committees that focus on improving education and service delivery in the school and community settings, developing public and private oral health partnerships, and standards-based school curricula. To assess the current school-based oral health delivery system and to identify needs and opportunities to improve oral health education, the COHC surveyed all school nurses, principals, and lead health education teachers in the state using three written surveys.
School nurses provide the majority of oral health education and services to students.
In response to these results, the COHC has worked closely with the SC Department of Education and the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control to plan four, 6-hour seminars for school nurses. These seminars will provide training for a minimum of 300 school nurses on general oral health information and identifying dental needs through the use of open mouth screenings. Based on research, a draft classroom curriculum for elementary teachers is being developed and pilot tested in two elementary schools. Then the COHO will work closely with the SC Healthy Schools initiative at the Department of Education to get approval for a standards-based, oral health curriculum package for grades three, four, and five. The current infrastructure of the SC Healthy Schools initiative is used in all coalition activities to ensure that educational activities and materials are well designed and used by schools throughout South Carolina.