Community Innovation Award in Oral Health 

Bright Smiles Hawaii (BSH) is a Project of the Hawaii Public Health Association and is supported by the DentaQuest Foundation’s Oral Health 2020 Initiative.

BSH has granted a total of four Bright Smiles Hawaii Community Innovation Awards in oral health outreach, education, and information-gathering in Hawaii communities at-risk for poor oral health.

The purpose of this award is to encourage and incentivize more direct interest from at-risk communities, increase community engagement, motivate change, as well as identify disparities and effectively address them in meaningful ways, with tangible results.

These awards focus on ethnic, geographic, and population-specific partners to share their mana’o (Hawaiian for knowledge) regarding innovative and successful approaches to engage their own respective communities. BSH supports community efforts to identify root causes of their oral health disparities and help lead efforts to develop innovative and community-supportive responses to address the social determinants of oral health.

BSH Community Innovations Awards:

Bright Smiles Ka’u, sponsored by the Ka’u Community Association, is located at the southern region on the big island of Hawaii. The Ka’u Community Association will be providing community outreach on oral health via a series of community fairs and also survey Ka’u residents about oral health disparities.

Maui’s Brightest Smilers, sponsored by community advocate Tasha Kama and her community partners, to reach out to Maui at-risk families. They plan to hold a series of talk-story sessions about oral health, participate in local community events to share oral health education & outreach, and survey Maui residents about oral health disparities.

The We Are Oceania Project, sponsored by We Are Oceania (WAO) will focus on oral health disparities in Micronesians living on Oahu via oral health education and outreach at community fairs and special mini health fairs being offered within the community, as well as surveying Micronesians about oral health.