Delta Dental of Wisconsin has awarded an additional $125,000 to the Center for Oral and Systemic Health of Marshfield Clinic Research Institute to expand its research and development of DentaSeal, a statewide dental sealant registry. Delta Dental of Wisconsin has supported DentaSeal since its inception.
Tooth decay is the single most common childhood disease. School-based sealant programs target schools that serve children from low-income families and focus on sealing newly-erupted permanent molars, thereby reducing caries in children. The State of Wisconsin, with strong support from Delta Dental of Wisconsin, has been a national model for the implementation and success of such school-based sealant programs in the nation.
“Tooth decay is a preventable condition. Sealant application is considered an evidence-based, preventive strategy to minimize tooth decay among children. DentaSeal has provided an important platform to help users find information about a child’s oral health/dental sealant information and monitor across multiple years,” said Amit Acharya, B.D.S., Ph.D., Research Institute executive director and project director of the DentaSeal application. “Delta Dental continues to support initiatives that are important to their public health mission and we are proud of collaborating with an organization like Delta Dental in a commitment to serving communities in our state.”
Since its inception in 2014, DentaSeal has been used within Wisconsin’s 48 Seal-A-Smile programs and has supported approximately 180,000 children’s dental sealant records. Wisconsin’s Seal-A-Smile sealant program, with support from Delta Dental, is a nationally recognized model for school-based sealant program implementation and success. Children’s Health Alliance leads and manages the Seal-A-Smile program in collaboration with the Wisconsin Department of Health Services’ Oral Health Program.
DentaSeal is a secure, web-based dental sealant registry software program designed and developed by the DentaSeal project team at Oral and Systemic Health. The project team worked with Children’s Health Alliance of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Department of Health Services to understand needs of school-based sealant programs and designed a software application that can:
- Capture, evaluate and track effectiveness and efficiency of school-based sealant programs across multiple schools over multiple years.
- Serve as an intuitive data capture tool that provides users the ability to accurately collect/look up a child’s oral health/dental sealant information.
- Be a real-time reporting tool that queries useful information during the school year and for end-of-year reports
More information about DentaSeal can be found online at www.marshfieldresearch.org/iosh/dentaseal.