The language that comes out of a person’s mouth has no effect on the teeth and gums inside the mouth. But language barriers can have adverse consequences on long-term dental care.
University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Dentistry students Katelynn Clark and Vashti Convers are attempting to overcome these potential obstacles through a series of dental education videos they are creating in both Spanish and English. The videos – which are being shared with the public on the school’s Facebook and YouTube social media channels – are part of the third-year dental students’ Albert Schweitzer Fellowship project.
“We really want to emphasize the importance of oral health as a whole, and preventative care specifically,” says Clark, a native of Rainbow City near Gadsden, who earned a Master’s degree in multidisciplinary biomedical science from UAB before starting dental school. “We want to explain simple procedures and basic oral health knowledge that a lot of us take for granted, but to a population that might not have experience with those types of things.”
Clark and Convers met on their first day of dental school and quickly bonded through their shared Hispanic heritage. So when they agreed to work together on the ASF project, they decided to focus on providing dental information aimed at the Hispanic community.
The idea originated from an American Dental Association email newsletter that contained a story about oral health disparities within the Hispanic community. The story stated that such disparities exist in part because of cultural and language barriers that can hinder patients from seeking dental treatment.
“Ever since I was in high school, I’ve wanted to find a way to help the Hispanic community,” says Convers, a native of Huntsville who majored in biology as an undergrad at UAB and also received a Master’s in biology before enrolling in the SOD. “Now that I have the knowledge and experience from being in dental school, I thought this was a way I could do something to help.”
While the videos have a casual feel to them, the students say the message is important. Initially they simply wanted to emphasize the importance of basic dental care, something that does not always resonate within the Hispanic community. Recent research from the Health Policy Institute found that Hispanic adults are the least likely of any racial or ethnic group to seek out dental care, a finding that matches the personal experience of both Clark and Convers.
“Vashti mentioned how her family doesn’t really go to the dentist unless there is a problem, and my family is the same way,” Clark says. “So we started brainstorming about how we could get to the root of the issue, which is to understand dental and oral health overall, and we came up with doing the videos to educate. But they’re bilingual videos so everybody can benefit.”
Generating the idea proved to be the easy part. Actually creating the videos was a bit more challenging. Convers says it took “a lot of trial-and-error” for the duo to get the first few videos to look and sound the way they wanted.
“Our first video, we had a script that we memorized and practiced, and then we had to do so many takes,” Clark says. “It took a few times to get comfortable with it. But now we don’t even memorize the scripts. We just decide what we want to say and then film it.”
The first series of videos focused on preventative care in general, such as the best way to brush and the importance of flossing. In the coming months, the students plan to concentrate on more specific topics, including oral health for children and periodontal disease, followed by a series of videos spotlighting various dental specialties.
In addition to being posted on UAB SOD social media platforms, the students have been working to get the videos picked up by other outlets such as Latino News and the Hispanic and Immigrant Center of Alabama (HICA).
“As the year goes on, we also want to go to community events and show these videos and get first-hand feedback from people,” Convers says. “If people take just one thing away from watching them, then that’s better than nothing.”
Clarks agrees. “There can be a lot of misconceptions about oral health, and some of that is cultural from how you are raised and what you’re introduced to when you’re growing up,” she says. “We want to increase the knowledge and understanding about the importance of preventative care for everybody.”