Oral Health Education Fund Attracts Excellent Response

The British Dental Health Foundation has received an excellent response from oral health education teams across the UK keen to access a new charitable fund established to boost their work, especially in disadvantaged communities.

The Foundation has received approaching 50 formal enquiries from NHS Trusts and other organisations registering their intention to bid for funding from the Foundation’s Oral Health Education Project, established with a generous charitable donation of £100,000 from the ‘Wrigley’s Tooth Fairy Fund’.

The Oral Health Education Project forms part of the Foundation’s fortieth anniversary celebrations later this year and Wrigley’s own centenary celebrations in 2011.

Interested and qualifying organisations will now be invited to submit an outline for their projects, which are scheduled to begin in August later this year.

Chief Executive of the British Dental Health Foundation, Dr Nigel Carter, said: “We have been very pleased with the response to the Project, which we announced at the start of National Smile Month.

The feedback from oral health educators has been very positive and for many organisations it provides an opportunity to fund projects which have been affected by limited funding.

We begin the difficult task of judging the applications next month, with the winners being announced on 15 July.”

Louisa Rowntree, Corporate Affairs at Wrigley said: “We are really excited that the Wrigley Tooth Fairy Fund is supporting the Project as it is so important that we deliver the benefits of oral care directly to the public.

I can’t wait to see the proposals and know that we will have some difficult choices to make.”