This story is part of a series on the challenges and solutions related to oral health in Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio. It is made possible with funding support from the Delta Dental Foundation.
When dentists in Fort Wayne, Indiana, realized preschoolers weren’t learning the basics of oral health, they turned to a small nonprofit known for tackling big challenges.
What they got was Brush, a simple but powerful program that is transforming oral health education across 39 states.
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Nicole Fairchild
“We didn’t set out to build a national program,” says Nicole Fairchild, CEO of McMillen Health. “We just responded to a local need and applied what we knew best—how to create health education that people actually understand and use.”
Founded in Fort Wayne in 1981, McMillen Health is the oldest independently operated health-education center in the country. It reaches 100,000 students annually and continues to grow. Under Fairchild’s leadership, the staff has expanded from 12 to 32 in just a few years.
Addressing an unmet need
The need for affordable, accessible oral health education for young children has long gone unmet in many communities. While cavities are the most common chronic disease of childhood, according to the CDC, few early childhood programs have the time or tools to offer consistent oral health instruction. That’s where Brush! comes in.
Launched in 2012 with support from the Isaac Knapp District Dental Society, Brush is a 52-week curriculum built specifically for Head Start classrooms. Each lesson is just 15 to 20 minutes and easy for teachers with no dental background to implement.
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A Brush presentation at Mentone Kindergarten Readiness.
But the real innovation is in how Brush bridges the classroom and the home.
“We created flip charts with QR codes and bilingual prompts so caregivers could engage, too,” Fairchild explains. “We know kids don’t brush alone. They need parents who understand how oral health fits into daily routines.”
That focus on accessibility is central to McMillen’s approach. Every resource is written at a fourth- to sixth-grade reading level, and materials are available in eight languages: English, Spanish, Burmese, Arabic, Dari, Pashto, and Mandarin (simplified and traditional).
“We want families to feel empowered, not overwhelmed,” Fairchild says.
Delta Dental Foundation aids growth
Brush has reached 2.9 million children and caregivers in classrooms, homes, and WIC clinics. The program’s rapid growth is in large part thanks to its partnership with the Delta Dental Foundation, which funded the first large-scale printing and helped scale it regionally.
From there, Delta Dental affiliates in other states took notice and asked how they could bring Brush to their communities.
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A Brush presentation at Brush- Pleasant View Early Learning.
“We’ve been proud to support the program’s expansion,” says Holli Seabury, executive director of the Delta Dental Foundation and former CEO of McMillen Health. “The simplicity, the scalability, the focus on equity – it checks all the boxes.”
Each year, McMillen evaluates Brush’s impact through participant surveys. Trainers report increased confidence in teaching oral health, and many say the program changed how they think about health education.
For example, as part of the first year of the WIC Brush Training pilot project, 30 WIC staff members in Detroit, including dietitians and nurses, received training to educate mothers of young children about oral health, nutrition, and how to find a dentist. The program expanded access to care for about 23,000 infants and children through five pilot clinics in the city.
More than 1,000 children received a dental referral as a result of the training, and nearly all of those referred who visited a dentist received preventive care. Following the training, 95% of staff correctly identified the recommended age for a child’s first dental visit as between 6 months and 1 year. Staff comfort in discussing oral health issues also improved, increasing from 36% before the training to 86% after.
Among WIC staff members, 95.8% reported they had not received any previous training on dental health topics, according to a report about the program.
More contributions by McMillen
While Brush remains McMillen’s flagship program, it’s just one example of how the nonprofit responds to gaps in the public health system.
In 2020, McMillen launched Healthy Tomorrow, a prenatal and postnatal app created in response to a pediatrician’s request for resources to support mothers with opioid use disorder.
The app features 100+ videos that cover everything from neonatal abstinence syndrome to safe sleep and mental health, all in easy-to-understand formats.
“When moms told us they didn’t want more brochures they couldn’t understand, we listened,” Fairchild says. “Now they have videos they can watch anytime on their phones.”
McMillen is currently partnering with a local coalition, Children’s Health Collaborative (CHC), to develop a 9-Healthy Habits, a K–12 nutrition curriculum that integrates video learning, reflection journals, and caregiver guides to help students take ownership of their health.
“Health education shouldn’t be a privilege,” Fairchild says. “It should be available in every classroom, in every home, and in every language.” This is made possible by partnering with organizations across the nation, who we develop and design resources for to fit their health education needs.
For more information about Brush or to access McMillen’s full library of resources, visit
www.brushdental.org.
All photos courtesy of McMillen Health