WHAT EXACTLY IS THE MYSMILEBUDDY PROGRAM?

MySmileBuddy is a web-based digital health platform that guides parents through the day-to-day management of behavioral risks for childhood tooth decay – the #1 chronic disease of U.S. children.

The MySmileBuddy digital platform incorporates educational videos and animations, risk assessment questions, a 24-hour diet recall tool, interactive goal setting and action planning modules, educational handouts, and a host of automated follow-up text messages that help families reach their own health goals through their own action plans.

The MySmileBuddy Program can be utilized as a freestanding app by parents and caregivers or can be delivered by a MySmileBuddy Coach – a health professional or lay health worker (e.g. a Community Health Worker) who has completed the MySmileBuddy training modules for coaches.

MySmileBuddy complements or minimizes the need for conventional high-cost dental repair that is imposing on children and too-often fails to prevent disease progression.

MySmileBuddy can improve child and family experience and long-term health outcomes at lower costs than traditional clinical approaches to caries intervention.

The MySmileBuddy Program brings Therapeutic Caries Counseling (TCC) directly to families and caregivers to prevent tooth decay or stop it once it has started. TCC has five essential components:

1.      Engagement and education

2.      Risk assessment

3.      Goal setting

4.      Action planning

5.      Follow up support

​

Click here for a brief video that explains these TCC concepts.

This short (2:36) whiteboard video introduces the MySmileBuddy Program. It describes the problem, calls for health-behavioral interventions to prevent and arrest caries experience, and describes how the MySmileBuddy Program can work with multiple providers, in multiple sites to address multiple populations in their own language and culture.