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Member Center: Children's Dental Health Month

The American Dental Association held the first national observance of Children's Dental Health Day on February 8, 1949. This single day observance became a week-long event in 1955. In 1981, the program was extended to a month-long celebration known today as National Children's Dental Health Month.

Since 1941, the observance has grown from a two-city event into a nationwide program. NCDHM messages reach millions of people in communities across the country and at numerous armed service bases abroad. Local observances often include poster, coloring, and essay contests, health fairs, free dental screenings, museum exhibits, classroom presentations and dental office tours.

The American Dental Association produces a program planning kit for its state and local societies and dental alliances to assist them in local promotional efforts. Planning kits include a poster, planning workbook, suggested resources, reproducible handouts, and publicity information. Posters are also available to the dental societies for use in classroom visits.

To order materials for Children's Dental Health Month contact Brenda Goeden at brenda@sddental.org or call 605-224-9133. Please keep in mind that our material is available for South Dakota dental offices and organizations only. Other states can order directly from the ADA.

 

News Items

2010 Legislative Session in Final Week

The SDDA's legislation to preclude insurance companies from dictating maximum allowable charges for non-covered services has cleared the Senate and the House and is on its way to the Governor's desk.
While there is no overt action to reduce funding for the Adult Dental Medicaid Program, on-going efforts to cut spending - in order to balance the State budget - require us to keep a watchful eye on the Program.  Adult Dental is the only optional program within the Medicaid Program. We continue to closely monitor the budget process closely and it appears, at this time, that the Adult Medicaid Program will not be cut.

Follow Legislative happenings by using our online grassroots advocacy system. All members can access updated information on  legislation affecting dentistry through the SDDA's web site. Members should go to the Advocacy page on the web site (click here) to access the online system. Once in the system, members can peruse a list of bills the SDDA is following, track the legislation as it works its way through the process and read background information on the legislation. The system will also allow members to view how their Legislators voted on our issues. The system is password protected - members should use SDDA as the user name and their ADA number as the password.