Feb 16, 2010
Media contact: Kim Lawrence
Office: 604-864-4611
kim.lawrence@ufv.ca
UFV Dental Hygiene students team up with Bruiser and win top award
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Bruiser with a missing tooth -
shoulda worn a mouthguard!
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UFV’s Dental Hygiene students knew they were onto a good thing the moment Bruiser, mascot for the Chilliwack Bruins WHL team, walked through the door.
Bruiser, with his huge grin, teamed up with the university’s third-year Dental Hygiene students last fall. Together they worked on a campaign to endorse the use of mouthguards while playing contact sports. With the help of Bruiser’s winning smile, the UFV students have now won the Canadian Dental Hygienist Association’s award for community work.
Bruiser became the poster boy for their safety campaign — his huge grin had teeth blacked out with tape to demonstrate a smile damaged by a sports injury. The project became a community effort, and the students took their message to a WHL hockey game, made a video that aired on the arena’s jumbotron, distributed free toothbrushes, and gave out information packages about protective mouthguards.
“The objective was not only to demonstrate the process of having a custom-fit mouthguard made, but to show families that the dental office has a friendly and inviting atmosphere,” explains student Michelle Beattie. “Research has shown that many children are not protecting their teeth and mouths while playing sports. We saw this as an opportunity to promote oral health and the profession of dental hygiene.”
The students learned about the Canadian Dental Hygienist Association’s oral health promotion contest early in the fall, and decided they could do a class project about mouthguard awareness. Making contact with the Bruins, allowed the class to reach many levels of the community on a personal, yet entertaining level.
“This hockey team is a big part of Chilliwack and the players serve as role models to many children,” adds Beattie. “The venue provided us with a large audience of about 5,000 and we had a chance to creatively educate the public on the importance of oral health in general and specifically protecting the dentition when playing sports.”
The idea turned into a fun, community event as students set up an oral health awareness booth at a game and gave out new toothbrushes in exchange for donations to the food bank. Beattie says there were many winners that evening, including the hockey club, which dominated the game.
“With the Bruins earning the win, we felt the entire event was a huge success,” she adds. “We managed to raise $150 and some non-perishable food items for the food bank, and were able to educate many people on the importance of oral health. Not only did we achieve our goals, but have learned more about the oral health needs in our community, and consequently we plan to continue spreading awareness of dental hygiene.”
A few days later, the class was contacted by staff at the British Columbia Dental Health Association; the organization wanted to use their infomercial at another community event. The students were thrilled their video has now had several different audiences.
Dental Hygiene program coordinator Shauna Warner says the project was a great exercise in teamwork and planning for the students.
“Their entry into the CDHA contest went above and beyond their curriculum requirements,” she says. Warner explains the entire senior class participated and they did considerable background work to come up with a fun, interactive event that would appeal to children. “While we do have a community-based project in our program, it’s nothing as big or as exciting as what these students have come up with. It was certainly impressive.”
Along with the national award comes a $2,000 monetary prize. Student Amarjit Ghatore says the best thing about participating in the contest was turning the project into a community event where so many dental practices, groups, and organizations contributed. It was also fun working with Bruiser.
“It’s a great honour for our class to be selected as the best in this category from all over Canada,” she says. “Our class is especially thankful to the dental offices in the community. We had a lot of support from them. We hope to see UFV’s Dental Hygiene program being involved in more community events in the future.”
UFV has a three-year diploma program in Dental Hygiene. To find out more about UFV and its many health care programs, please visit www.ufv.ca/health.htm
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