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GFTH 2020 : Having the chance to change someone's life

What if you had the chance to change someone's life, provide services to those in need, be part of raising awareness for access to care issues across our country, while highlighting the role of the dental hygienist as a key oral health care provider.

This is truly what "Gift from the Heart" is all about.

It's about using our platform, our voice and and our skills as registered dental hygienists to give back to the community and make a difference in oral health and general health outcomes.

Each province across Canada is dealing with a variety of access to care issues, some more complex than others. However, the reality is Canadians of all ages are not able to access regular dental care. GFTH was created to meet the needs of these people and fill the gap that exists.

As dental hygienists we can provide a variety of preventative services, but even more importantly we can help identify red flags, risk factors, and areas of concern that are related to conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and oral cancer. This is why community members cannot go without regular dental care.

On April 4th, 2020 we can decide to focus on an area of our scope of practice that meets the needs of the population we are planning on serving. For example, oral hygiene instruction, fluoride treatments, scaling/debridement, oral cancer screening, smoking cessation, and nutritional counselling. As volunteers we decide on the services we want to provide, the amount of time we are able to give, and the location to provide services.

There will be registered dental hygienists seeing clients in private practice settings, independent hygiene offices, school locations, community centres, retirement homes and long term care facilities to name a few.

When we unite together to provide no cost dental care to those in need we can fill the gap, and help identify an underserved population requiring our services.

Please visit to register.

http://www.giftfromtheheart.ca/


Lisa 💜

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