Happy National Dental Hygienist week! The second week of every April, we celebrate the outstanding, dedicated, and selfless work dental hygienists do — inside and outside of clinical settings — to improve the oral health system. 

Despite the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) longstanding advocacy for routine dental care before and during pregnancy, there’s still a significant disconnect between the awareness and implementation of these recommendations in clinical practice. This gap in care can lead to suboptimal perinatal outcomes and overlooked oral health needs in pregnant patients.

Carolina Family Health Centers, Inc. has provided medical and dental care for patients in three North Carolina counties for years. But during that time, the Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) was having trouble accessing a specific part of the population that needed oral health care — children.