- Home
- Programs & Services
- Division of Public Health
- Personal & Family Health
- Oral Health
- Children & Youth with Special Health Care Needs
Children & Youth with Special Health Care Needs
Children and Youth with Special Health Care Needs (CYSHCN) is a term most frequently used to identify children and adolescents who have been diagnosed with a physical, cognitive or neurological condition. Kansas Bureau of Oral Health is committed to assuring that families, caregivers, health care providers, educators, and therapists have access to evidence-based materials. The goal is to assure optimum oral health for all infants, young children, school children, and adolescents.
- Healthy Smiles for CYSHCN Training Course Number 1015072
- Oral Health Resource Center
- Additional Resources
Healthy Smiles for Children & Youth with Special Health Care Needs
The Kansas Department of Health and Environment, Bureau of Oral Health (BOH), and Oral Health Kansas have developed an online training course: Healthy Smiles for Children and Youth with Special Health Care Needs. The course provides basic information about oral health conditions and challenges experienced by children and youth with special health care needs. It also describes actions to prevent oral disease for everyone who supports optimum health and development for children and youth. The course was developed through funding from Material and Child Health Targeted Oral Health State Systems grant awarded to OOH. The Bureau of Local and Rural Health provided extensive technical assistance to format and enter this course into Kansas TRAIN (KS-TRAIN).
Continuing Education
The course content is valuable to dental and medical staff, as well as those who are therapists, caregivers, and family members. This online course provides 2 free dental continuing education units to those who pass with a 75% rate. Other professionals searching for continuing education can receive a certificate verifying 2 hours credit in order to self-apply to their respective organizations.
To Access Train
Go to the Kansas TRAIN website. On the home page, create an account, or if you have taken a KS-TRAIN course before, log on with your own user name and password. Once on the home page, scroll to locate the "Search by course ID" box. Enter the course ID number, 1015072, into the section on the main page. From there, click on the "registration" tab and launch the course.
Warning: Turn off your "pop up" blockers.
For Technical Assistance
For technical assistance with KS-TRAIN, call 785-296-5655, Monday through Friday from 7:30 am to 5 pm.
- Smiles for Life Website: A Health Professionals Guide to Pediatric Oral Health Management (2020)
- 7 self-contained online modules with a focus on infants and young children, including prevention of oral disease, oral conditions, and abnormalities. One module is on children with special health care needs.
- Oral Health Services for Children and Adolescents with Special Health Care Needs - Resource Guide (2020) (PDF)
- The guide is divided into three sections, including:
- Journal articles
- Books, reports, curricula, manuals, modules, guidelines, papers, facts, and tip sheets, CD-ROMs
- Other agencies and organizations that may serve as resources
- The guide is divided into three sections, including:
- Oral Health for Children and Adolescents with Special Health Care Needs - Challenges and Opportunities (2014) (PDF)
- 2-page fact sheet
- National Maternal and Child Oral Health Resource Center Website: Bright Futures in Practice Oral Health Pocket Guide (2016)
- Designed to help health professionals implement specific oral health guidelines during pregnancy and postpartum, infancy, early childhood, middle childhood, and adolescence; includes considerations for children with special health care needs.
- Oral Health and Learning Fact Sheet - When Children's Health Suffers, So Does Their Ability to Learn (2013) (PDF)
- 2-page fact sheet
Resources
- What is a Dental Home? An online reference for parents and policymakers (2018) American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry
- View the Policy on the Dental Home webpage
- Practical Oral Care for People with Developmental Disabilities, A series of guidelines for specific conditions such as autism, cerebral palsy, Downs syndrome, and mental retardation. (2020) National Institute for Dental Craniofacial Research. Some materials are also available in Spanish.