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Dentists Target Youth With Anti-Tobacco Web Site

(HALIFAX) Nova Scotia's dentists are getting tough with tobacco use, turning their efforts towards the province's youth. The Nova Scotia Dental Association's award-winning children's web site, Healthy Teeth, has a brand new section on the oral health effects of tobacco use - complete with graphic images of some of the more ugly results. "The photographs on our web site are meant to be graphic and a little disgusting," said Dr. Heather Carr, a local dentist and tobacco cessation representative of the NSDA. "But what we see each day, the effects of tobacco on the patients in our dental chairs, it's quite graphic as well. Our web site is seen by a lot of elementary school-aged children and these are the Nova Scotians we need to reach before they start using tobacco. It's important they see the effects before they start using tobacco."

The association's Healthy Teeth site healthyteeth.org is one of the internet's top oral health education database sites, drawing visits from students as close as metro and as far as Korea. Healthy Teeth is a featured learning resource on Industry Canada's SchoolNet and recently recorded its 300,000th visitor.

Tobacco use is a major contributor toward a variety of oral health diseases and conditions, from leukoplakia to oral cancer, and dental associations provincially and nationally aggressively advocate tobacco cessation to patients. In addition to its children's web site, the Nova Scotia Dental Association is a Do You Smoke?, campaign partner with the Medical Society of Nova Scotia and Sport Nova Scotia and a charter member of Smoke-Free Nova Scotia.

For more information, contact:
Steve Jennex, APR
Nova Scotia Dental Association
(902) 420-0088