Oral Health America Partners with Colgate for Online Training Program
Oral Health America (OHA) and Colgate have partnered to bring OHA’s Tooth Wisdom®: Get Smart About Your Mouth oral health education curriculum to an online platform utilizing Colgate’s Oral Health Network for Professional Education and Development. This partnership allows the opportunity for oral health professionals to receive online training on how to appropriately and effectively communicate with older adults in preparation for teaching the workshop to older adult consumers.
As a part of OHA’s older adult program, the Wisdom Tooth Project®, Tooth Wisdom: Get Smart About Your Mouth is a unique oral health curriculum designed to provide older adults with a sense of self-efficacy to care for their oral health, delivered in community settings where they naturally congregate.
Often overlooked during their education, dental professionals increasingly need to consider the importance of oral health care education for older adults, and Tooth Wisdom: Get Smart About Your Mouth aspires to be the first evidence-based course of its kind. This partnership brings online training on communicating with and facilitating groups of older adults to dental hygienists and other oral health practitioners throughout the country using OHA’s proprietary curriculum.
“Colgate has been with OHA every step of the way since 2008. Bringing the Tooth Wisdom: Get Smart About Your Mouth curriculum online together speaks of the longevity of our relationship and the success of these older adult educational workshops,” says Beth Truett, MDiv, BS, president and CEO of OHA. “Having piloted the curriculum in five states over three years, we are ready to take these ‘train the trainer’ materials online to a national audience.”
The Tooth Wisdom: Get Smart About Your Mouth online modules stress the importance of prevention at any age. The online training program is broken into three modules: “Overview of Older Adults and Baby Boomers and Cultural Competency”; “Communication with Older Adults, Social, Behavioral Theories/Constructs, and Group Facilitation Skills”; “Practicum: Tooth Wisdom: Get Smart About Your Mouth”. Trainees must complete all modules and, upon payment, receive six (6) CEs and become a certified trainer, fully equipped with the materials needed to successfully present Tooth Wisdom: Get Smart About Your Mouth in their communities. A discounted launch price of $19.99 is available through August 2018.
“The partnership with Oral Health America helps illustrate Colgate’s commitment to increasing access to quality oral health care, building healthy habits to change the lives of older adults vulnerable to oral diseases, and also contributes to professional education and development of dental professionals in the United States,” says Barbara Shearer, BDS, MDS, PhD, Scientific Affairs director North America, Colgate Oral Pharmaceuticals.