CavityFree SF

CavityFree SF (formerly the San Francisco Children’s Oral Health Collaborative), now in its 7th year, has been hard at work to improve the oral health of our city’s children through systems change. Advocating for policy, creating champions for oral health, integrating fluoride varnish into medical systems, and supporting and facilitating community partnerships are some areas of focus that have yielded success.

CavityFree SF is a citywide partnership dedicated to achieving optimal oral health for all San Francisco children. We aim to eliminate oral health disparities by influencing policy and establishing systems that provide preventive services and treatment. Utilizing a collective impact model, we work with partners across the city to promote healthy behaviors and increase access to oral health care for children.

CavityFree SF employs six strategies to accomplish its mission:

• Access – Traditional: Increase access to oral health care services in traditional dental settings for San Francisco children and pregnant women.
• Access – Innovative: Increase access to oral health care services for San Francisco children and pregnant women outside of traditional dental settings.
• Integration: Integrate oral health with overall health care.
• Promotion: Increase awareness and practice of optimal children’s oral health behaviors among diverse communities in San Francisco.
• Evaluation: Develop and establish an ongoing population-based oral health surveillance system to address the oral health of San Francisco children.
• Coordination: Provide coordination and oversight for the implementation of the Strategic Plan.

The deployment of these strategies over the next five years will help CavityFree SF to reduce the prevalence of dental caries experience and untreated dental decay, reduce the disparities between Asian, Black, and Latinx kindergarteners and White kindergarteners, and ensure the provision of preventive dental care to low-income children. With a particular focus on equity, this plan will further help CavityFree SF live out our values, to ensure that all children in San Francisco have a healthy start.