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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Arizona’s Toothless Law Hurts Kids’ Dental Health

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Friday, February 25, 2011   

PHOENIX - A new report coinciding with National Children's Dental Health Month finds little cause for celebration in Arizona. The study from the Commonwealth Fund ranks the state 50th for children's oral health.

Pediatric dentists and doctors say the simple preventive step of painting toddlers' teeth with a fluoride varnish during pediatrician visits could have a major impact. However, Arizona is one of 11 states that won't pay for the service. Tucson pediatrician Gretchen Hull says the neglect can lead to a host of problems.

"Missed school days, impaired language development, inability to concentrate in school, reduced self-esteem, possible facial cellulitis requiring hospitalization. It may threaten the eye as well."

Access to dental care is extremely limited for low-income and uninsured children, Hull says, especially in rural areas. However, children see a pediatrician an average of 12 times in the first three years of life.

Scottsdale pediatric dentist Richard Chaet says early and frequent access to children by pediatricians provides a valuable opportunity to assess a child's oral health before problems develop and to educate parents and caregivers on proper dental care. Prevention avoids the need for costly treatment of severe childhood dental problems, for which the state does pay, Chaet says.

"It's very expensive to restore teeth, and that's the whole point of getting the children at one year of age to either the dentist or the family-care doctor doing an examination and checking the child."

The state can't expect doctors and dentists to absorb the $50 to $60 cost of applying a fluoride varnish, Chaet says, even though it's relatively inexpensive.

"All of us donate services on a routine basis, quite honestly, but you can't do it for every single patient."

Another problem has been that general dentists often didn't want to see children until age 5, Chaet says, but that is changing as the result of better training.

The Commonwealth Fund report is online at commonwealthfund.org.


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