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On Saturday, Aug. 7, Integrity Dental Services, the Atlanta-based dental laboratory, will host its inaugural back-to-school “Healthy Smiles Drive,” 1 to 4 p.m., at S.L Lewis Elementary School, 6201 Connell Road, College Park. Families should go to the bus loading area.
The event was created to support oral hygiene among minority children and provide school supplies to help students succeed in school.
Through Integrity’s Healthy Smiles Drive, Integrity Dental Services CEO Robert Dinker is providing College Park elementary school-aged children and their parents/guardians with the products and educational information needed to support pediatric dental health. To help kick off the 2021-2022 school year, attendees will also receive backpacks filled with school supplies.
The community back-to-school outreach addresses critical needs among minority children, Dinker said. According to the Georgia Oral Burden Report, 19 percent of third graders in Georgia have untreated dental decay. The prevalence of tooth decay among children in Georgia with low socio-economic status (SES) is 50 percent higher than the prevalence of tooth decay among children in high SES. The proportion of non-Hispanic black and Hispanic high school students who visit an emergency room or urgent care center for oral or dental problems is twice the proportion of non-Hispanic white high school students who visit an ER for the same problems.