2015 Smile Survey Summary King County
Report by Peg Terp, RDH, MPH,, Susan Kinne, PhD, Moffett Burgess, DDS, PhD, Shelley Guinn, MPH RDH, Justin Weisser, MPH
June 2017
Public Health Seattle & King County monitors the oral health of children to provide data to communities and agencies to help address this problem. In 2015, as part of an oral health assessment conducted every five years, the Washington State Department of Health conducted a statewide oral health Smile Survey of 13,704 elementary school children in kindergarten, 2nd and 3rd grades and 1,479 children in Head Start/ECEAP preschool programs. Dental hygienists examined the teeth of children in a sample of schools, looking for treated, untreated and rampant decay, and use of dental sealants on permanent molars.