By Aryan Panchmatia, Rachel Lee, Ishmyne Bhamra.
DiPS (Dentists in Primary Schools) was a consultant-supervised, student-led project established in 2021 by the MPDSS (Manchester Paediatric Dentistry Student Society).
At the time, rates of decay in 5-year-olds of Greater Manchester were higher than the national average. Therefore,the project aimed to improve children’s oral health through interactive and playful oral health education workshops specifically designed for Key Stage 1 (KS1) students.
The project has been running successfully for the past three years and has reached over 700 children across 7 schools in Greater Manchester!
We are excited to share the success of our recent service-learning initiative, ‘DiPS International: The Kenyan Project’. This project, established in 2024 by the MPDSS, aimed to improve oral health in young children within the city of Kisumu in Kenya. Under the guidance of consultants, the project was led by dental students and involved multiple parties that contributed to the success of our project.
Kenya became our area of interest since the WHO (2022) reported that in 2019:
– The prevalence of untreated caries of deciduous teeth in children 1-9 years = 44.9%,
– The prevalence of untreated caries of permanent teeth in people over 5 years = 24%
– The total number of dentists in Kenya was 1300. The number of dentists/10,000 population between 2014- 2019 was 0.2.
In response to this, our project focused on tailoring the existing DiPS workshops to deliver essential oral hygiene information and oral health tools such as toothbrushes and toothpaste.
Over a span of 7 days, we delivered our workshops to 867 children (ECD, Class 1, Class 2) across 8 primary schools!
We established relationships with a local non-for-profit organisation called ‘The Rahul Kotak Foundation’ which aims to make good quality education accessible to children from marginalised communities.
From our early meetings with the team, we were positive that they would be an appropriate bridge to local communities within the city of Kisumu. Their team helped obtain the necessary permissions from the Ministry of Education to undertake our project. They played crucial roles, including identifying and liaising with local primary schools, helping to recruit and train local volunteers to deliver the workshops, and assisting with the planning and logistics of the sessions.
We also advertised the volunteering opportunity to local schools, universities and communications channels with the help of RKF. The volunteers attended an in-person training session a week prior to commencing the workshops. The training was delivered in two parts, the first half covering basic oral health information and the second covering information needed to run the workshops.
Working together with members from RKF and local volunteers helped us to overcome the language barrier that we had anticipated, and deliver the workshops in Swahili.
Prior to commencing our DiPS workshops, we spent a day shadowing dental clinicians at the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Teaching and Referral Hospital (JOOTRH). This was a fantastic opportunity to gain insights into a new healthcare system operating in a different country.
We primarily observed endodontic procedures and extractions during our visit and gained an appreciation for patient care at the hospital. From the experience, we were able to draw similarities and compare differences in practice and methods between our two countries.
Furthermore, we acknowledged and discussed some of the challenges and barriers to oral health faced locally with the supervising clinicians.
On days that we delivered DiPS workshops, we would begin by transporting materials and volunteers to the schools with assistance from RKF. Once we arrived at the schools, the head-teachers and staff representatives welcomed us and showed us to the classrooms where we set up for the day.
Each day, we conducted a total of four sessions — two in the morning and two in the afternoon. Each session was delivered to a class of 30 children, who were split into smaller groups of 6 and assigned to a pair of volunteers. The children rotated around 5 stations that covered the following topics:
– Oral Hygiene
– Roleplaying of a Dental Visit
– Tooth Modelling
– Diet and Sugars
– Reading and Colouring.
With support from the RKF team and local volunteers, we learned to adapt our messages using Swahili words and phrases that were more widely understood by the children.
Through the interactive set-up, we utilised tooth models and brushes to demonstrate proper brushing techniques and even practised cleaning between teeth with floss. We emphasised the importance of regular cleaning and the role it plays in preventing decay. Furthermore, we used dolls and toys to role play a dental visit and encouraged the children to view visiting a dentist as a positive experience.
At our tooth modelling station, the children had a fun time making moulds of teeth using Play-Doh which they used to try out placing fillings and pulling teeth out! We also explained the effects of sugar on our teeth by using nail varnish remover (which we called sugary water) to dissolve styrofoam cubes.
The children were also keen to tell us about all the foods that had lots of sugar and were bad for our teeth! To finish off, the children enjoyed colouring out sheets with pictures of a superhero tooth and a dental practice! We also handed out goodie bags containing a toothbrush, toothpaste and oral health leaflets (in Swahili) to each child.
At the end of each session, we would address the children altogether and engage them by asking what their favourite stations were and what they learned today! It was rewarding to hear their excitement as they pointed to the tables they enjoyed the most at and shared pieces of information that they learned.
We also placed colourful posters on oral health around the schools in locations visible to all students that passed by!
On completion of all our sessions, RKF helped organise a ceremony to celebrate our volunteers without whom we would have been unable to deliver our workshops. We had an opportunity to reflect on our experiences while collecting positive and constructive feedback from our volunteers and the RKF team.
It was a fun time as we played lots of ice breaker games and socialised with all of our volunteers. We also presented everyone present with certificates to appreciate all their efforts during the project!
From the feedback we gathered, we were pleased to hear that the schools thought our sessions were well organised, covered a good range of topics, and engaged the children. They also expressed that they would love for us to visit again in the future!
Some of the constructive feedback we received from schools was that we should expand our capacity to reach more children.
Furthermore, a majority of the volunteers shared that they felt the sessions were well organised, covered relevant topics, and would recommend the volunteering opportunity to others. They also suggested a few structural changes to the sessions to help improve them for any future workshops. It was rewarding to hear their positive experiences with the project and everything that they had learned and gained from it.
Additionally, we gathered feedback from members of the RKF team which was overwhelmingly positive. They strongly believed that projects like these have positive impacts on the local community and would look forward to working with our team again.
On reflection, we recognise that there are still barriers to oral health in place as a significant number of children shared that they did not own a toothbrush or toothpaste at home. Moving forward, we are working to introduce toothbrushing schemes at the schools that we visited in order to provide long-term access to these tools.
We received plenty of support to bring our project to fruition, and we are truly grateful for all of it. We would like to acknowledge and appreciate SFRC (Social Responsibility Funding Call), Zochonis Travel Award, and SOMANDA for their generous financial support with our project.
We would also like to thank Colgate and TePe for their incredible support with materials for our goodie bags. We also appreciate all the support we received from the Manchester School of Dentistry, The Rahul Kotak Foundation, our wonderful team of volunteers and all the schools we worked with!
We look forward to future teams continuing this impactful work together.