College’s Hispanic Student Dental Association Wins Orgullo Competition
At the Greater New York Dental Meeting (GNYDM) recently, the UIC College of Dentistry’s Hispanic Student Dental Association (HSDA) was chosen the winner of the Hispanic Dental Association (HDA) Orgullo competition, sponsored by Procter & Gamble and Crest Oral B.
For the contest, students developed a video of about three minutes long demonstrating oral hygiene instructions, caries prevention, and nutritional counseling. The video beat out projects by six other dental schools’ students.
“The 2017-18 HSDA Executive Board members collectively came up with the concept of the video and contributed to the script,” said Crystal Luna, Secretary of HSDA. “We had two fantastic child actors, Selena and Gustavo Saucedo, who are family friends of Yvette Valencia, Co-President of HSDA, participate in the video along with Social Chair Cybill Rodriguez. Another HSDA member, Aliaksandr Shabanovich, completed the videography and editing.”
HSDA plans to use the video during community outreach events and will make it available to the Department of Pediatric Dentistry.
“We also would like to allow other dental students to use it during their pediatric dentistry rotation as part of their patient oral hygiene education,” Luna said. “Through our project, our goal is to make oral hygiene, caries prevention, and nutritional counseling fun for all kids within and outside of UIC.”
Luna noted that a pleasant surprise was “the talent and excitement that our child actors demonstrated via their acting in this video. They were quite enthusiastic about participating in the video and we were glad that they learned about proper oral hygiene in a fun way. We were also surprised by the amount of time and creativity that was required during the filming and editing of the video. We feel very lucky to have had such a great member, Aliaksandr Shabanovich, help us with this step.”
The Orgullo victory brought a prize of $750.
The video can be seen here.
In 2016, the College’s HSDA chapter won the HDA’s Nuestros Ninos contest, sponsored by Colgate, for developing a program that educates on the importance of dental care, good oral hygiene habits, and good diet.
The College’s HSDA chapter won for developing Dental Tracker, an interactive calendar and educational instrument that provides illustrations of proper oral hygiene and a calendar to track brushing, flossing, and diet. Students used Dental Tracker at the Iglesia Bautista Bethania Bethany Baptist Church in Elgin, IL.
At the GNYDM, students Camila Peralta-Sugano and Melissa Villafane presented the Case Study on the Dental Tracker project and accepted a $1,000 prize.
“We plan to use the prize money for both for future club events and activities,” Luna explained. “In the past, we have used our earnings towards making props for our outreach events, sponsoring students to attend CE courses and national conferences.”