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Toolkit

Talking About Children’s Oral Health

Using these templates to build communications can help engage the public in understanding children’s oral health in a deeper way, thereby improving the public conversation and decision-making about this issue.

Introduction

Welcome to Talking About Children’s Oral Health — a toolkit compendium of materials on how Americans think about children’s oral health, and how to increase public support for policies and programs that support children’s oral health.

This toolkit includes a variety of application materials, that are designed to reflect the research findings. Using these templates to build communications can help engage the public in understanding children’s oral health in a deeper way, thereby improving the public conversation and decision-making about this issue.

FrameWorks has also developed Watch Your Mouth, a public awareness campaign for coalitions wishing to advance children’s oral health in their communities and states. For more information about this campaign, contact us at: info@frameworksinstitute.org.

This toolkit was developed by the FrameWorks Institute for the DentaQuest Foundation.

Message Memo

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Framing Children’s Oral Health for Public Attention and Support

This FrameWorks MessageMemo assesses the communications environment that affects the success or failure of children’s health advocates to communicate effectively about children’s oral health.

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Applications

This section provides a variety of framing tools intended to help advocates understand and apply the research findings and recommendations on how to talk about children’s oral health.

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Talking Points (Children’s Oral Health)

A reminder of the basic elements of the children's oral health frame for use in preparation for media interviews, editorial board visits, or other public communications.

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FAQs (Oral Health)

This resource demonstrates how to ensure answers to frequently asked questions are well framed and grounded in evidence. It also shows how to avoid messages that might backfire.

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Sample Editorial 1 (Children’s Oral Health)

The following is an example of incorporating the framing research on children’s oral health into a guest editorial that links oral health to educational progress.

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Sample Editorial 2 (Children’s Oral Health)

The following is an example of incorporating the framing research on children’s oral health into a guest editorial that focuses on the value of Innovation.

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Sample Editorial 3 (Children’s Oral Health)

The following is an example of incorporating the framing research on children’s oral health into a guest editorial from a business leader.

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Case Study 1, Legislative Brief (Children’s Oral Health)

This document is a brief for state legislators, urging them to support a bill to increase access to oral health care by expanding the services provided by registered dental hygienists. This case...

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Case Study 2, Press Release (Children’s Oral Health)

This document is a press release about a state’s ranking in a national oral health report. This case study looks at the document after implementing reframing recommendations, and illustrates the...
Article

Episodic vs. Thematic Stories

In his book, Is Anyone Responsible? How Television Frames Political Issues, Shanto Iyengar hypothesizes that different ways of framing news stories have different effects on how viewers attribute...
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Communicating About Disparities in Children’s Oral Health

The disparities in oral health by economic status and race are important, and deserve the full attention of advocates. If this information isn’t communicated carefully, this can lead to...

Key Framing Guides

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What’s in the Swamp of Children’s Oral Health?

A graphic representation of the swamp of dominant patterns of thinking about children’s oral health. This can serve as a reminder of the themes in public thinking that your communications should...

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You Say, They Think (Children’s Oral Health)

An analysis of a series frame clashes — you say one thing and the public thinks another — which shows how certain ways of framing children’s oral health can get eaten in the swamp.

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Basic Message Templates (Children’s Oral Health)

The outline of a new frame for communicating about children’s oral health. The Talking Points, FAQs and Sample Op-Eds in this toolkit show a variety of ways to apply this basic template.

Research

Report

From the Mouths of Babes: How the Media Frames the Issue of Child Oral Health

This report examines more than a year‘s worth of news coverage on this issue (from August 2008 to November 2009) from more than a dozen newspapers nationwide. The findings from this work serve...
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FrameWorks Research on Children’s Oral Health

A summary of the research on children’s oral health that informs the communications recommendations.
Issues
Child and Adolescent Development Health
Countries
United States
Partners
DentaQuest Foundation