A healthy body is the best start for children who are studying at school, as it helps them to learn more effectively and gives them the best start in life. A good education leads to more opportunities and a better income as the child becomes an adult, and good personal health allows children to flourish in the classroom.

By providing medical examinations for students on entry to the school and educated observation by the class teacher, the Indian School Health Committee aims to prevent and cure illnesses and disease that can hinder a child scholastically. However, this scheme has so far failed to bring about successful results due to the lack of follow up checks, funding issues in schools, and ineffective co-operation between local authorities, schools and parents. That’s why the Trinity Care Foundation has introduced school heath programs.

Simple solutions

Some of the problems suffered by young students in Indian schools are relatively simple to treat or could be prevented through better health education.

Anaemia due to poor diet is a common health problem which can be both preventable and easy to treat in children. Symptoms of anaemia in children include weakness, fatigue, headaches and irritability. It is known to affect performance at school, causing a decrease in attention span and even learning difficulties.

In terms of dental hygiene, with regular brushing of teeth and a healthy diet, children are less likely to have cavities. Unfortunately, there are children who may have never seen a dentist and attempt to live life with rotten teeth.

Through school health programmes, problems such as these can be spotted early – usually by the class teacher – and the effects on learning and a child’s future minimised.

Students ages 5 to 17 years missed 1,611,000 school days in 1996 due to acute dental problems—an average of 3.1 days per 100 students. Early tooth loss caused by dental decay can result in failure to thrive, impaired speech development,absence from and inability to concentrate in school and reduced self-esteem. 

Dental Caries

Students with preventable or untreated health and development problems may have trouble concentrating and   learning, have frequent absences from school, or develop permanent disabilities that affect their ability to learn and grow.

Children who take a test while they have a toothache are unlikely to score as well as children who are undistracted by pain. Poor oral health has been related to decreased school performance, poor social relationships and less success later in life. Children experiencing pain are distracted and unable to concentrate on schoolwork.

Children are often unable to verbalize their dental pain. Teachers may notice a child who is having difficulty attending to tasks or who is demonstrating the effects of pain—anxiety,fatigue, irritability, depression and withdrawal from normal activities. However, teachers cannot understand these behaviors if they are not aware that a child has a dental problem.

Children with chronic dental pain are unable to focus, are easily distracted and may have problems with schoolwork completion. They may also experience deterioration of school performance, which negatively impacts their self-esteem. Left untreated, the pain and infection caused by tooth decay can lead to problems in eating, speaking and learning.

Dental Education in Schools

If a child is suffering pain from a dental problem, it may affect the child’s school attendance,and mental and social well-being while at school.
School nurses report a range of oral health problems such as dental caries, gingival disease,malocclusion (poor bite), loose teeth and oral trauma in children.

When children’s acute dental problems are treated and they are not experiencing pain, their learning and school-attendance records improve.

People who are missing teeth have to limit their food choices because of chewing problems, which may result in nutritionally inadequate diets. The daily nourishment that children receive affects their readiness for school. Inadequate nutrition during childhood can have detrimental effects on children’s cognitive development and on productivity in adulthood. Nutritional deficiencies also negatively affect children’s school performance, their ability to concentrate and perform complex tasks and their behavior.

Dental Treatment in Mobile Dental Unit

Oral health care is a critical component of health care and must be included in the design of community programs.

School-based oral health services can help make preventive services such as fluoride and dental sealants accessible to children from families with low incomes. Services should include screening, referral and case management to ensure the timely receipt of dental care from community practitioners.

Consultation for women 

Outreach programs are important tools for bringing health education and screening services directly to community members and serve to contribute to reducing health disparities.They assist communities and hospitals to reach mutually beneficial goals that would otherwise not be achievable for promoting accessible and equitable care.Many developers of outreach programs are not aware of their audiences’ literacy level as well as the major cultural norms and boundaries that support or impede community members’ behaviors relating to screening, early detection and prevention.

Patients during the Program

Thus, meeting the challenge of a strong health disparities agenda in community outreach requires integration of culture and literacy in all phases of intervention, communication and programmatic development. The incidence of medical conditions and resultant fatalities in India is higher than in the West, primarily due to the non-availability of pervasive affordable quality advanced healthcare solutions for the poorer segments of the society.

Well aware of this lacuna, Trinity Care Foundation conducts multiple Community Outreach Programs as its commitment and obligation towards the society. The aim of these programs is to redress the imbalance by providing quality advanced healthcare to the deprived and the underprivileged at their doorsteps.

Health Screening during the Program

ASHA Workers

The Organization worked in conjunction with government health officials in order to organize this event. Health Workers workers from villages in the district were directed in advance to escort patients with facial deformities to this camp. In order to spread the word about the camp, the foundation organized press releases in local newspapers and also put up advertisement posters in and around the town.  Additionally, a regional TV network was asked to cover the event itself.

A team of 11, including doctors as well as interested observers from other organizations, set out from Bangalore early in the morning and arrived at Channapatna hospital, the site of the camp at around 10:45 am.

Once there, the team began examining patients – who consisted mostly of young children and middle aged adults – to determine the extent of their deformities and decide on a possible course of action to correct these problems. These patients, led by their Health workers attended the camp after travelling from villages as distant as 60 km from the hospital.

Patients were examined by our team of doctors.

The team distributed toys – like plastic flutes, rubber pencils and even colouring books – as well as candies among the patients to help them feel comfortable during the process of examination. Nearly twenty people were examined for facial deformities, which included cleft lip and palate problems, misaligned parts and even locked jaws. The doctors explained to each patient – and in many cases, parents and other relatives of these patients as well – exactly what procedures needed to be done to cure them of their deformities. While the team had anticipated a problem in convincing patients of the need for surgery, there did not appear to be any such issue. Each person examined was given a diagnosis and a prescription sheet, and some patients were also asked to come into Bangalore for a surgery on a given date.

The camp closed at 1:30 pm, after every single patient had been observed.

Screening

Patients who require surgery will be treated at hospitals in Bangalore in the near future.

Trinity Care Foundation hopes to build on its successes by organizing such camp soon.

School health has four interrelated Goals:

1. Improve health knowledge, attitudes and skills.
2. Improve health behaviors and health outcomes.
3. Improve educational outcomes and
4. Improve social outcomes.

These goals are most effectively and efficiently achieved when all the goals are addressed simultaneously through a coordinated approach.

School Health Program

Why School Health ?

The health of young people is strongly linked to their academic success, and the academic success of youth is strongly linked with their health.
Thus, helping students stay healthy is a fundamental part of the mission of schools. After all, Schools cannot achieve their primary mission of education if students and staff are not healthy.

Health-related factors, such as hunger, chronic illness, or physical and emotional abuse can lead to poor school performance.
Health-risk behaviors such as substance use, violence, and physical inactivity are consistently linked to academic failure and often affect students’ school attendance, grades, test scores and ability to pay attention in class.

School health services are services from medical, teaching and other professionals applied in or out of school to improve the health and well-being of children and in some cases whole families. These services have been developed in different ways around the globe but the fundamentals are constant: the early detection, correction, prevention or amelioration of disease, disability and abuse from which school aged children can suffer.

School Health Program can be could be a critical means to improving both education performance and the well-being of our young people and the adults they will become.

School Health Check-up

The good news is that school health programs and policies may be one of the most efficient means to prevent or reduce risk behaviors and prevent serious health problems among students. Effective school health policies and programs may also help close the educational achievement gap.

World No Tobacco Day 2012 Program

The Program intended to create awareness among  the people about the harmful effects of tobacco consumption highlighting the ill health effects of smoking to both smokers and non-smokers. An Oral Screening with Health Education on the evils of tobacco was given  to the patients and their attendants. Patients were given education about the risk factors associated with tobacco consumption and smoking.

1. Health Education –  ill effects of Tobacco
2. Oral Screening –  Diagnosis and Referral to M.R Ambedkar Dental College for Further Treatment
3. Dental Treatment – Minor Treatments on the Mobile Dental Unit

World No Tobacco Day 2012 will educate policy-makers and the general public about the tobacco industry’s nefarious and harmful tactics. Tobacco industry interference is the theme of this year’s World No Tobacco Day.

The campaign will focus on the need to expose and counter the tobacco industry’s brazen and increasingly aggressive attempts  to undermine global tobacco control efforts. The campaign will focus on the need to expose and counter the tobacco industry’s brazen and increasingly aggressive attempts to undermine the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) because of the serious danger they pose to public health.

World No Tobacco Day 2012 Program

Tobacco use is one of the leading preventable causes of death. Each year, the global tobacco epidemic kills nearly 6 million people. It is on a track to kill more than 8 million people by 2030, by which time approximately 80% of the deaths would occur in low and middle income countries.

Many patients were diagnosed with oral dental pre-malignant condition and lesions like oral sub-mucous fibrosis, leukoplakia, tobacco quid lesion, smokers palate. Complete oral screening was done and many patients received treatments on the Mobile Dental Unit stationed at the Bus Stand.

Counseling Sessions were also discussed with patients and their attendants. The Program was initiated by Trinity Care Foundation and M.R Ambedkar Dental College.

School health Program

School health and youth health promotion: Facts

• Worm infections are the greatest cause of disease among 5-14 year old children.
• Vitamin A deficiency is the single greatest cause of preventable childhood blindness.
• Iodine deficiency is the single most common preventable cause of mental retardation and brain damage in children.
• Injury is the leading cause of death and disability among school-age youth.
• One out of two young people who start and continue to smoke will be killed by tobacco-related illness.
• Worldwide, 5% of all deaths of young people between the ages of 15 and 29 are attributable to alcohol use.
• In some countries, up to 60% of all new HIV infections occur among 15-24 year olds.

All of the above health problems can be prevented or significantly reduced through effective school health and youth health programmes.

“Preventing leading causes of premature death, disease and disability”

Many of today’s and tomorrow’s leading causes of death, disease and disability (cardiovascular disease, cancer, chronic lung diseases, depression, violence, substance abuse, injuries, nutritional deficiencies, HIV/AIDS/STI and helminth infections) can be significantly reduced by preventing six interrelated categories of behaviour, that are initiated during youth and fostered by social and political policies and conditions:

• Tobacco use
• Behavior that results in injury and violence
• Alcohol and substance use
• Dietary and hygienic practices that cause disease
• Sedentary lifestyle
• Sexual behavior that causes unintended pregnancy and disease

Better learning in school and better educational outcomes.

Good health is essential for learning and cognitive ability. Ensuring good health when children are of school age can boost attendance and educational achievement. School children are often thought of as naturally healthy, but studies have shown that in Africa, more than half of the schoolchildren are stunted in height and are anaemic, and that in many areas most schoolchildren are infected with worms, bilharzia and malaria parasites. These highly prevalent conditions are all associated with impaired cognitive ability.

New opportunities, unfulfilled needs.

Global and national initiatives to achieve universal access to basic education mean that more children now have the opportunity to go to school. As a result, more children can be reached by the school system than ever before. They need health interventions because most of the children now attending school were previously beyond the reach of both the education and health services. School health programs can help ensure that children are healthy and able to take full advantage of what is often their first and only opportunity for formal education.

Enhanced Equity.

Children who begin school with the worst health status, have the most to gain from health and nutrition programs. They also have the most to gain educationally, since they show the greatest improvement in cognition as a result of health intervention. School health programs thus particularly benefit the poor and the disadvantaged. These children are increasingly accessible through schools as a result of universal education strategies.

Builds on investments in early child development.

Increasing numbers of countries have recognized the need to ensure good health and development during the most vulnerable early years of life. Integrated management of childhood illness, early child development, and growth monitoring and promotion programs all help to ensure that a child enters school fit, well and ready to learn. But the school age child continues to be at risk of ill health, and the health of children, especially girls, often deteriorates during the school years. School health programs ensure that children remain healthy during the years that are critical for education.

Promotes youth development.

School-based methods of promoting healthy behaviors are amongst the most successful ways of tackling some major problems of adolescence: violence, substance abuse, teenage pregnancy, and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS. Risk behavior in adolescence can have a major impact on education: in some countries in Latin America, for example, more than a third of adolescent girls leave school prematurely, never to return, because of unplanned pregnancy. Achieving positive behavior change can promote the educational achievement of youth, and contribute to social capital.

A cost-effective investment in education (not just health).

School-based health programs, if well-designed, can be amongst the most cost-effective of public health interventions. Since they promote learning, and simultaneously reduce repetition and absenteeism, they can also be used as leverage for existing investments in schools and teachers. But they must be well designed. Many countries have discovered that by redesigning their existing programs -particularly school feeding programs – they can enhance the educational effectiveness while actually reducing the cost.

For Children and Youth:

School, College, Orphanages and Specialized Population: Dental Screening, Education and Treatments and referral to Specialized Dental Centers.

Dental Screening

For Adults:

Dental Screening, Education and Treatments and referral to Specialized Dental Centers.

For Seniors living in nursing homes, retirement homes and living centers :

• Screening for potential dental problems.
• Awareness workshops on the importance of good oral health and disease prevention specific to seniors.
• Professional cleaning and identification of dentures for seniors in the mobile dental clinic.
• Demonstrations on brushing techniques for residents and/or their caregivers.

For Teachers and Parents:

Health Education Program for Teachers is a must since children are with them most of the time, Parents can be also trained to reinforce the message at home. Health Education during Parents Teacher’s Association Meet is a wonderful Concept that could be implemented.

Programs for specialized populations conducted by Trinity Care Foundation;

Dental Screening for SHG’s ( Self Help Groups) in Karnataka, India.

This Public Health Dentistry Program was for Oral Health Education and Screening for Women Self  Help Groups( 18 members) in Halsuru Village, Kanakapura Taluk, Ramanagara District, Karnataka, India. There was health education focusing on Oral Hygiene, Children’s Teeth, Tobacco, Myths of Dentistry and General Health and followed by discussion, Oral Health Check-up and Treatment. Women are the Light for their Families mostly in Rural Areas. They have more commitment towards their family and near and dear ones.

Public health dentistry

Oral Health Program for Children Living with HIV in Bangalore, India.

This Public Health Dentistry Program was conducted in an Orphanage in Bangalore for Children living with HIV. The Program focused on Dental Check-up, Health Education and Dental Treatment. Treatments like scaling and restoration was done at the Orphanage on the Mobile Dental Unit and those requiring specialized treatment were referred to M.R.Ambedkar Dental College and Hospital, Bangalore, India.