[00:00:02] Speaker A: Kia Ora and welcome to the whole Tooth AO/ NZ, a platform for oral health professionals by oral health professionals. We will share the kaupapa of the oral health profession in Aotearoa and will seek to speak the tooth, the whole tooth and nothing but the truth.
[00:00:15] Speaker A: In this episode, we will talk to Anishma Ram, dental therapist and the current Colgate oral health Promotion manager of the NZDA. Grab your cup of tea, sit back and listen to me, Becky Ahmadi, talk to Anishma Ram.
The Whole Tooth Ao/NZ is sponsored by the Clare Foundation. Claire is a progressive philanthropic foundation that wants more for our people and our planet. Check them out online. CLARE DOT NZ C-L-A-R-E DOT NZ Ok dokie Anishma, welcome to the podcast the Whole Tooth Ao/NZ listeners. You are blessed. This is round two. We've just talked for the last hour and I didn't push record. So now the dearest Anishma is going to bless us with her story. Take two. It was so good the first time around, so I'm so sad that I'm going to make her do it again.
Oh, Anishma, welcome.
[00:01:12] Speaker C: That's all right. Hi, everyone. Hi. So, my name is Anishma. And yeah, I think the first question that you had asked is, who is Anishma, the oral health professional? So, a little bit about myself. I am the fifth generation Fiji born Indian, so born and bred in Fiji, and I've kind of accidentally went into dentistry. I didn't really choose that as a career, but that's the only career opportunity that kind of came forward with a scholarship. Back in my country, in those days, you could only go to university if either you could have a government scholarship where they would pay for your education, or if your parents could afford to send it to you, to you, to the university. So I was lucky enough and blessed, obviously, to be able to get a school scholarship to study or dental therapy, as they called it.
And I managed to also get accommodation paid as well. So it was a cool three years. Went about too quickly. We had fun. I lived in a hostel, so it was really fun.
And after I graduated in 2005, but now you know how old I am, I went to work as a dental therapist in the beautiful island of Fiji called Overlau. So Overlau housed the old capital of Fiji, which is Levuka. So the population of 9000 people, everyone knows everyone. You cannot do anything without the whole world knowing what you were up to. So the day I showed up at the airport, and the interesting thing is about the flight time is the smallest plane ever goes to that place. And if it gets dark, the plane won't land because there's no light.
If it starts to rain, the plane won't land. So you go back to Suba. So it's about a ten minute flight. And all of the hospital was pretty much. They agreed to greet me because they all knew someone knew was coming, and it was a beautiful place to work and leave. And my dental clinic was right across the ocean. And as I mentioned to Rebecca earlier, I swear some of the equipment in there was around when Jesus walked the earth. It's just old. I'd never seen some things before, and I really developed some muscles trying to work them. And you cry, you learn, you grow. That's your fifth year as a clinician, and I think we all have had our stuff that we would have done that. We think, oh, my goodness, did I even do that? So it was quite fun and the community was really lovely. And I stayed there for 18 months, and then I met the love of my life that I'm married to, and I came to New Zealand. So then the next part of my journey started where I spent four years trying to find, trying to get registered. So I worked in both private and public sectors as a dental assistant while I was trying to get through the process. And it was a tedious process. It was difficult.
We had issues with just about everything because I didn't know anyone who had done this. And even if I did, their pathway was a lot simpler. So for me, it took a long process and it was a very expensive process, too. So at the beginning of 2011, I managed to get registered and I got a job in the same clinic, in the same team, Papato Otara, where I was working as a Dental assistant. And while I was working as a dental assistant in that region, I was involved in a lot of community based projects, or we do what we call preschool outreach programs, where we take our little caravans or dental vans into preschools, and we'd examine these children and then we'll get them back in the clinic, we treat them. And I enjoyed seeing that. So it was one of the reasons why I actually decided to continue to register as a dental therapist, because I kind of liked what they did. I kind of liked how the school dental nurses, aka dental therapists, work with children. And I absolutely enjoyed the New Zealand system where these things were free. You could pick a child from class and get them, treat them and the communication that you have with parents and everything. So I did that. Since 2011 to 2023, I was a full time clinician. I had another child in the meantime.
During that time, I was stayed in the same clinic around the same area. So all the patients kind of knew me. I'd seen their children grow up. You know how you're old when your patients children come and visit you, right? And they remember you? So, yeah, it's one of those things in that role. While I was a dental therapist, I also did my postgrad. So I did my postgrad diploma first, and then I took up some mentoring roles, student supervision, which I absolutely loved, and I did some leadership roles. And then I kind of reached a ceiling again. I've done the studies, so I did what we call a cast for career and salary progression scheme. And that's when I discovered my passion, or that's when I discovered something about that I'm passionate about now that's working with children with disabilities. I had never worked with children with disabilities as closely as I did when I went to work in a school in Pepper Tower. And one of the teachers comes to me and she says, can you get us some toothbrushes? These children don't brush their teeth. And we have a life skills program where we help these children to learn about the normal, everyday skills, because most of these children are not brushed or they don't know how to do it themselves. What we are missing is a brushing program. So I started to source some toothbrushes, and I really couldn't, didn't get too far. So I kind of used my funds and some of my own connections to start a brushing program. And that was successful. And what we got out of it is children who we could motivate to brush teeth, even though some of them were actually scared. They'd never had had a toothbrush after the ten day palate that we did, they were getting it in their mouth or watching the other peers do it. And they were starting to love the vibrations of the oscillations of the brush when they were allowing the teachers to clean their teeth. And there were mums who actually commented on how their children are now loving the brushing their teeth. And we found that those were some of the things that actually worked, so that the electric brushes work better than the manual ones for most of these children. And that's when I found out that there wasn't much information about or established or literature in New Zealand about children with disabilities, dentistry, or anything related to dentistry and disabilities, apart from one study that was done about 20 years ago where they highlighted that issue, that there's a need for research, but come 20 years later, there was nothing so I embarked on this journey to my master study and that was one exciting journey. So I worked for Te whātu ora at the time. Te whātu ora, it was called Waitemata DHB, pretty much, and Auckland Regional Dental Service. So when you work for a dental service or when you work for a DHB, the biggest asset that you have is they have got data for Africa. So you could pretty much manipulate that and you could use that to your advantage. And that's what I thought I would do because by the time I managed to get a supervisor, which was a nightmare, to be honest, because there are very few dental supervisors and they have a lot of students. And I struggled to find one. I struggled to find one. And when I finally did, it was a non dental supervisor. And then I had my head of discipline, who was Dr. Helen Tanish. She supported me through my studies quite a bit. And then Dr. Liz Webb, she also supported me. So I wasn't really alone alone. But I started at the beginning of 2020, as soon as I signed my papers to say that I've started now I'm a student. We went into lockdown and I waited for five months for locality approval, another six months for ethics before I could start. And you've paid the fees. What do you do? You kind of wait because the people who could do the locality approval were probably at home trying to get their remote access to work. So it was an interesting space that we were in. And I managed to finish my masters and I still pat myself on myself on the back, how I managed to do that, but it finished. And my journey was an exciting one. It's an interesting one, the journey that I set out to do, obviously I found a lot more in different things than actually than I got. So after I finished my masters, I went. Started looking for something else. Another ceiling was reached. I've done this. What do I do now? And three of my friends, three different people, sent me one email with this particular job that I'm doing now. They said, this is for you, you should apply. So I applied and they thought I was good enough and they hired me. And I'm talking about New Zealand Dental Association. So currently I am the Colgate Oral Health Promotion manager for NZDA. Now before I start that part of my story, I'm also board member.
So I was a board member for New Zealand Dental and Oral Health Therapies association, which is now dissolved. And I'm current exec on New Zealand Oral Health Association. I'm also the founding board member for the Nipple, New Zealand Pacifica Dental association and we have a charity dinner on the 25 November. Please email
[email protected] to see if you can get a ticket to the event. We would love your support.
Apart from that, I work for NZDA now and I also do some occasional clinical work. And the best part of this new job is that I get to wear nail polish. I get to do flesh nail polish at different times and I get to wear jewelry that people take for granted, like a watch, like a bracelet to wear high heels, I get to wear nice dresses to work and I can have a break anytime. How cool is that? It's not like I have to wait for a patient. Like when you finish a patient, you have to kind of hold on for the bathroom break because you're finishing up a patient. I don't have to do that. And I was so excited when I first started. I was like, so I can eat it too if I forgot to eat it one. And they're like, yeah. I'm like, okay, so that's something. Some of the perks, I think people who have always done admin roles will never know that those who are clinicians, we actually value those little things. Oh, I can just go for a walk and then come back and my patient's not waiting. I can actually get on with the rest of my things. So those are some of the perks of, I guess, having a more desk job.
And I'm thoroughly enjoying it, to be honest. It's a nice change.
[00:12:48] Speaker B: Certainly you're looking very beautiful with your nails and your beautiful bracelets, which is something that the everyday clinician doesn't get. Well, maybe that's just me. I always forget to wear jewelry, but I think it's just habit. You keep your nails short and clean and no fancies on your wrists.
Now, we touched earlier on your pathway to becoming a registered clinician in New Zealand. In their first version conversation, you talked really eloquently about some of the barrier or that pathway of getting registered and I guess tips and tricks for people who might be thinking about getting registered in New Zealand as an oral health professional, specifically oral health therapist or dental therapist.
[00:13:35] Speaker C (Anishma): So my journey, like I said, I knew of some people who had done the process, but it was different for everybody and they were still trying to establish a process because we had just newly become registered professional. I think 2004 was when the registrations came into effect and I'm talking 2007, so it wasn't too long. So what I had to do is that I wish I had known this, but I didn't. And I was trying to organize a wedding who will try and gather their certificates, but they have a wedding to organize. So I came in and you have to have a lot of information sorted from back home if you are actually coming to New Zealand to register, because all this information will be beneficial for things like police clearance test, you have to do an English test and if you had done it in your home country, it makes that one step a little bit easier. And. Or if you can get all your records, like your academic transcripts or your coursework, and you should also get letters of good standing from any country that you registered in or you worked in or different associations. And even if you could get stuff like references from your lecturers or professors at your university, those are the things that actually carry a lot of weight while you are applying for the process. And it is a long process and I just wish it wasn't so long. But sometimes it cost me $15,000 to register as a dental therapist. And it took about two and a half to three years to complete the whole process. You have to get your qualification assist and then they will come back to you and they will say whether you are eligible to even do an exam or something of that sort. So that's another thing. Then you have to wait for the exams. And this was a bit of a nightmare because I waited for six months for one paper and then I was the only student who did both the theory and the practical paper. And it was fun like that. But if you think about it, that weight wasn't warranted. And then after that, $15,000 and that much stress, I managed to get registered. But I know of a lot of people who went through similar process and they could not make it. And they were not necessarily bad clinicians, but I just felt like they didn't have that support.
When you're a clinician, if you don't do clinic every day, you still need that support, that training, to be able to pick up the handpiece and go, okay, I can cut a class two under rubber dam, right? So the quality of work that is assessed for registration is the quality of work you'd perform as a final year student. When we're a final year student, you make sure everything is done perfectly. And I kind of feel like you need a little bit of refresher for that because when you're out in the clinic working two years, three years, four years, five years, we don't do all procedures under rubber dam. I walked in Levuka, I would love you to find a rubber dam.
Nod, nod. I'm nodding.
Just praying, because you walk with what you have, especially if you're working in remote countries or remote islands. And I also see the value of getting registered in New Zealand because I kind of feel like I've been through that process and I can see the value of it. So, yes, I would not say that any immigrant from any country should come in and practice ASAP, like straight away. I see there is a need for that pathway so you can transition into the New Zealand climate of working. And we hold our clinicians to very high standards, and obviously our patients expect a very high standard from us as well. But I think the process could be streamlined by doing like a refresher program where you teach them what you want them to know, you teach them. I mean, there are clinicians, they know how to be a clinician. What they don't know is how to do it in a New Zealand environment. So that's what you need to teach them. And that shouldn't be too extensive or it shouldn't be too difficult because most of the time they don't want you to show them the anatomy while they're doing an IDP. They know that they just need a little bit of experience, that somebody would support them. Something that we offer our graduates or our students. Not everybody has their hands settled, and if you haven't practiced in three or four years, there will be a little bit of unsettling. There's a little bit of being nervous around patients and stuff like that. And you know what? Just do a whole refresher course on rubber dam.
Like when you do it. Just do it on rubber dam. Because I swear no one goes out there and does all the procedures as much as we should. But who has the time? Try doing it on a child.
[00:18:11] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a whole 'nother podcast, Anishma, on why we should use rubber dam.
[00:18:20] Speaker C: Why we should use it. Exactly.
So that's what I think, and that's probably the one way. But I still believe the value that we should have some sort of training or something before we register them to work in New Zealand. There's definitely the need for. Yeah.
[00:18:38] Speaker B: Yes, I definitely agree with you. Given that I have a special interest in education and supporting clinicians in any way possible, I can see the value in creating cohorts of return to work or cohorts of immigrants wanting to become oral health professionals and walking together through, I don't know how long, six month program where you understand the New Zealand context.
You just treat some of the patients that are within a New Zealand context and you're back to your confident, competent, DCNZ ready clinician.
And that exam at the end is setting you up for success.
So I really hear what you're saying there. We need clinicians to help us improve oral health and we also need more than what's being graduated out of our universities to meet the need. So next one I would love to hear about is your masters. You just touched a little bit on your special interest in children with disabilities. And I think this is quite an in depth topic and we could talk for a little bit about your journey through your research, but also some of your findings, opinions and ideas on how we can improve the clinical space or the service that we provide for children with disabilities.
[00:20:11] Speaker C: Yeah. So as I mentioned earlier, my study was creating a characteristics profile. The reason why I chose the topic was that we didn't have anything in that space at that time. There was no studies that had been done. So to be able to do the fifth study, I kind of needed to see where we at, pretty much where are these children? What can we find? Let's create a platform so that we can build on it in future.
So the interesting thing was we decided to do a retrospective audit because I had all this database, all the information from Auckland Regional Dental database that I thought would be so much easier than actually going and getting it from parents. And how wrong was that? But anyway, when you were in, during COVID and during that time, that actually seemed like a very practical solution and it was, to be honest. So what I did is that I had to do data collection. In a funny sort of way. I couldn't just go to titanium and tell them, or the guy that looks it guy, and just say, I want this, this and this. Because for these children, there was no set place where they were kept. I didn't know how they were recorded or how they were kept. And apparently there was a number that you used to identify these children. But I wasn't aware of this and the managers were not aware of this. So somewhere along the line we had forgotten or there were some gaps that obviously were not filled or some information that wasn't transmitted where we didn't know how to record these children. So what I did, I went to the Ministry of Education website. I grabbed a whole list of names of all the schools that housed satellite clinics, or they would have the satellite facilities where they had children living with disabilities enrolled. And so I got the list from them. Then I went to the different managers in Auckland Regional Dental Service and I asked them to marry up, that for me. And they would give me a list of children that they managed to get from the school and that was already enrolled in the titanium database. So those are the lists that I gave to the IT guy and then used that list with those NHI numbers to extract data. So it was pretty much of merry go round process. And the problem is that while I was doing this manually, I didn't even know whether I managed to capture all the children in Auckland that were living in disabilities or was there a fair amount that's left or are there children sitting in titanium still under normal, like under the normal population group that would have some disabilities, but they were not being identified. So it was a very gray area. I managed to get 119 or 117 something was my number.
Ages was from five to 13 because five is the time when the child gets enrolled and then 13 is obviously when they exit the service. So we have collected information about DMFT, all forms of it, like the primary, permanent, mixed medical conditions, if they had any, what kind? Precall dates, length of appointment time, or whether they were seen at a hub clinic or transportable dental unit.
Did they miss any general anesthetic appointment? Did they miss any appointments or were they referred to GA, stuff like this? Or did they have X rays taken?
So there's a whole list of things that, oh, was the area fluoride or not?
The social demographics, like gender and other things, obviously. But then where did they live in? Like which area did they live in? The deprivation states, all those things. We got out and then once we cleaned the data and started looking at it properly, we realized that there was a lot of missing information. For example, medical history was something that obviously was clumbed in together, so you wouldn't know the way it's written. You wouldn't know what the child had, because it's not written to be extracted and used for analysis. If I can make it in a more clearer way, it's written for the clinician to be able to see it and interpret it and use it for that purpose.
So I didn't know about this, obviously, and now I do. And now I know why. In the other studies that was done overseas, they actually collected the data from the parents themselves because that would have been a more accurate interpretation of the information.
And then another thing that we found, the DMFP values were mostly zero. And I knew that wasn't true. I mean, as much as I tried not to be biased, but you kind of know that's not true. So that was another thing. And then I couldn't find general anesthetic information because tetanium had gone through a whole revamp and he lost a lot of data. So there was a few limitations, quite a few of those. But what we did here, we managed to analyze and I did some, and I used my DMFT, as my DMFT was dependent on very different variables and we managed to find some associations. So there were some gender predictions. Younger children had a higher carries risk, obviously at a higher DMFT states than older children. So specifically five to seven and eight to ten. I think they were higher than the older ones. On the other spectrum, they were quite predictable associations, like those who had radiographs taken had higher DMFT states and females had higher risk than carries rate than males or ethnicity. We found that apart from European and Asians, every other ethnicity had some sort of statistical significance with that. So there was these things that I managed to find out from the quantitative analysis. But what kind of baffled me is that how do we account for this missing information? Is there anything else that we do? There must be a reason why this information is missing or we can't quite answer that bit. Let's talk to the stakeholders. And I'm glad I did, because when we spoke to the stakeholders, we interviewed five stakeholders.
They were community dentists, dental therapists. Oh, managers, clinical service managers, and basically the whole realm, from one end to the other, of people who walked in the service from a range of two years to about 30 years. And all they had to say is that common themes were, why is the DMFT zero? Is because the clinician is not able to do their work properly. Our clinics are not suited to cater for the needs of these children and they were very strongly resonating that theme. And the fact that SDMFT was zero is because they could not record it if they didn't see anything in the mouth. If the child didn't open the mouth, how will they put something in there? And obviously it's retrospective analysis, so you cannot say that child could not open his mouth or child ran away from the clinic or something like that, because that won't be picked up. So that was one thing that they had said. It was the way we were not able to manage these children or see what was in their mouth and the struggles that the clinicians had in trying to do their assessments done on just getting their clinical exam done, it was an eye opener. I mean, being a clinician, I knew, but just hearing other people come from different areas of life and talking about it it was quite interesting.
And then another common theme that resonated was that the priority that was given to these children, it felt like you don't know where these kids were all medical. The policy there that we hate was that anybody who has a medical conditions or is immunocompromised will have you on a six month recall. But we don't see them on a six month recall because, number one, we cannot identify them to put them there. Yes, they are given a six month recall, but we are so far behind in our services that we were not able to. But had there been a priority list where these children were pulled in a list, people would make a point of seeing them on time because you knew that there was a reason to see them on time because of their medical conditions or their issues.
So that was one of the things that they talked about. They also talked about how foreign or how carry or how unaccommodating the clinic is. And maybe that's one of the reasons why our patients fail appointments, is because they are nervous, they know it's not going to work for them. Or how do you go to an appointment when you go to other children and your child needs 100% attention?
And then the other thing that we found out is the parents were not disclosing the medical history. And if a parent doesn't disclose the medical history, you can't say do anything. That's it. It's their decision. And that was an issue that was encountered by a lot of them and that had impacted the operator. So if you had a patient who had booked an appointment, you would book a 15 minutes appointment, but then you knew as soon as the patient walked through the door is that they need an hour. So that was head impact.
It's just that everyday theme that people are not given priority. I think priority was the biggest issue that we had about not being able to see these children on time. Or sometimes oral health is not a priority for some of these patients as well. So the parents have so many things that are going on, and oral health is not necessarily a priority.
And also there were talks about having a clinic or having a hospital that is specific to cater for the needs of these people, where a parent could walk in and they feel at home, because the child would be treated by someone who knew exactly how to treat them and they knew about their medical history. There would be a nurse around the corner, a physio around the corner in the same building, and you would have a specialist clinic walking at the end of it, and maybe a GA facility. I'm talking about a utopian world, obviously, but if something like this could be done, we would not be stressing out. We won't have stressed parents or clinicians, we would have patients who would actually be seen the way they needed to be seen, in a place that's more comfortable for them, and they would actually be given the care that they need, that every other child has access to, but they don't. These were some of the talks that we had, and these are some of the things that definitely emerged from my thesis, that there is a need for more stringent policies, there's a need for funding to be pulled, specifically in the disability sector and for oral health, because if all the money gets pulled into one big sector, we don't get much out of it. We are like the poor cousins who get invited or doesn't get invited, or people forget to give us invitations.
Oral health has always been like that, any sector. We seem to be the last person to be invited to the party. And currently we have the disability.
They're creating this disability unit where they're trying to focus on people living with disabilities, and I'm hoping and waiting that oral health will get a part for it. And hopefully we get to advocate for our patients.
[00:31:43] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I think there's space on their website to drop them a line. Anishma, I think that's time we could send them a message and say, talk to us. We've got something to say. And I must say that even though your idea is utopian, if it's about patient needs or meeting the needs of the patient, I can think of a few cases.
My husband's an ENT surgeon, and when he knows that children with disabilities are coming in and he's seen that they might have some issues with their teeth because I've schooled him up, well, he will just take himself go over the corridor to the dental unit and say, hey, look, next Wednesday I got the parent to fill out this referral or whatever, because it needs to be this inter- collaboration, inter professional collaboration, because when the parent realizes, like, oh, my gosh, they're going to get that rotten tooth out and the adenoids and the Grommets and their tonsils all in one, I know it's probably a bit horrific for the kid, but it's not two GA's
So, yeah, I do agree with having that services that meet the needs of patients and that oral health shouldn't be dropped off because it's a no brainer, there's sufficient research on the Earth to show that poor oral health is attributable to multiple other co-morbidities.
[00:33:06] Speaker C: Exactly. Comorbidities.
Yeah. And I think it's about time that oral health professionals, all of us, come together as a unified group and we strongly advocate for issues that obviously should have been highlighted ages ago, but they sort of get pushed to the side because there are more pressing factors that other people think are more important. And like I said, we already have issues with children and their oral health is not the best. But then we have this other group that is not even prioritized in the Ministry of Health database when they have their states for their five year old and their 13 year olds. We don't have a list separately for people with disabilities. The way we examine them was different and they would have different needs and obviously it would be good to see what is it out there so we can support them. So the fact that they're not even on there, that means they're not a priority.
And how long will these go on?
So these are some of the things that definitely arose from my thesis and I definitely have plan to move this forward and definitely do a lot more work, more work in it, because I just feel like I brought it this far and I really want to see something come out of it and things come to fruition and we have that group of people that are forgotten and that's something that I don't want. I don't want any child to be left behind. They should not be left behind just because you have certain disabilities and you should be priority. But why are you not a priority? We have to work together to try and make them a priority. They should have the same level of care and excuse as any other child in every area of their life.
So that's definitely one of the reasons why I pursued this and I plan to pursue it in my future studies and stuff as well. Yeah.
[00:35:14] Speaker B: Oh, that's fantastic. I'm sure that the disability community will be very thankful that there's someone in the oral health corner raising a flag for the needs of oral health of their children with disabilities because, yes, they are not prioritized and if anything, they definitely should be. So your research and well done, you. I said well done for your masters. It is an achievement. Having written mine last century, I remember how difficult it, you know, the passion that you have for your specific area is only going to do good for oral health in New Zealand as well. So what else do we need to talk about? Oh, yes. What's your role now in NZDA?
[00:36:07] Speaker C: Tell me about that role. Like, I said earlier, it's a cool role. I get to wear jewelry and nice clothes and I get to have pretty nails and that's kind of like the highlight of my year. I said to my husband, I'm going to spend all my extra time and money getting my nails done because I deserve it.
So my role is quite cool. I get to create resources, I get to run projects, I get to do promotional activities, I get to basically community collaboration and stuff.
Yeah, it is a project management role. So some of the things that I did while I was a DAo, I'll walk watchifatua and in a very small scale, I get to do that on a national level and creativity is at the forefront of its thinking. So I get to be as creative as I want to be and that's probably the best parts of the role. And like I said, I can have a lunch break anytime.
[00:37:05] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't think any other profession, if you're not a clinician, that bathroom break.
[00:37:12] Speaker C: Or that luxury.
[00:37:14] Speaker B: Luxury.
So that's fantastic. That role in NZDA is able to bring out that creativity and oral health promotion and education. Do you think there's a space there for you to bring your special interest out at a national? Sort of.
[00:37:34] Speaker C: Definitely.
What are we trying to do is when we try to create resources, the next thing that we are thinking of doing is making sure we are encapsulating the three languages of the land. So that's English, Maori and sign language. So that will be our fifth step into trying to advocate for the community that is left behind or we forget about them, the people who live with disabilities. So up till now we haven't done much with that, but definitely thinking about it and there are some resources in the pipeline that have been created for that and I'm working in progress. So this is like watch this space come next year because this is my learning year. So watch this space. There is a lot of changes that's going to come from that space and definitely incorporating my passion for children with special needs or just advocating for the disabled community. Definitely, yes.
[00:38:39] Speaker B: I'm wondering as well that given.
[00:38:44] Speaker C: I.
[00:38:44] Speaker B: Guess the gathering and the connectedness of dentists with their specialist skill and special needs dentists, they have their conferences and they know multiple published resources and researchers, but it doesn't seem to filter down into the public space or especially in New Zealand, the community oral health space.
And I wonder that.
[00:39:08] Speaker C: There is a.
[00:39:09] Speaker B: Space for an overlap between those two sort of professions or areas of profession, as not all children who have special needs need to see a specialist. But then not all children with special needs can come to us either. So it's sort of that middle ground that there's room for growth on both sides and also room for collaboration on both sides too.
[00:39:36] Speaker C: I think the biggest problem that we suffer in this country, and aside from policies and protocols that I highlighted is our work shortage, it is severe. It's a big thing to find people who are passionate about special needs dentistry, to find oral health therapists who'd want to take this up as a career option.
And that was some of the things we talked about. Yes. And trying to incorporate. I think we need to be incorporating the confidence, the competence, how to train people to look after special needs children. There should be a special training. And I think if we want to grow our profession, like even talk about oral health therapy, want to grow it, we should offer it as a postgrad option.
[00:40:19] Speaker B: I love the way you think.
[00:40:21] Speaker C: Yeah, I had talked about it. It should be offered as a postgrad option so that, you know how we talk about there's not much growth in our space. But I just feel like now that we have gotten that advanced scope, soon we should advocate, or hopefully we can get what you call the prescribing rights and then this would be just an additional. So not everybody has to do. It could be like a certificate level program that we could bring out and there will be people who will be interested. There's always people who for these things and I just feel like. And there should be trainings for DAS as well to help and support because we can definitely create whole new sort of like a career pathway just in this field. And it's something that has not been experimented with or done with in our profession, but then so hasn't a lot of things. And look how well things have turned out.
[00:41:28] Speaker B: Final part of our kōrero and it's switch to water. Take it away, Anishma.
[00:41:34] Speaker C: Okay, so Switch to Water is a New Zealand campaign and the NZDA Campaign 1 November 2024. This year, Wednesday we observe National Oral Health Day and part of the National Oral Health Day campaign is 'switched to water'. This is the 9th year of us running this campaign. It's a very straightforward and a very simple campaign where for the month of November we encourage Kiwis to swap their sugary drinks for water.
Why do we do it? Just to give some perspective. We as Kiwis consume 37 teaspoons of sugar per day in our food and drink.
And the average sugar consumption for who is six teaspoons for adults and three teaspoons for children. So that's more than six times of what we consume daily. A third of our children and two thirds of our adults are either obese or overweight, and they have a very high chance. And children, younger and younger, younger and younger children are having type two diabetes, which is as a result of having those excessive sugar, which is not spent. And then the just tends to fate and obviously the metabolic disorders happen. And we can talk about the status of teeth till the cows come home.
I just looked at the States online before I started this conversation, and what we found out was actually quite sad, because 2021, the five year old data, we had 58% children who were carries free.
And this year, and the year exactly one year after, we had 56% of children who had carries free. So within a year, we've gone up by 2%. Fact that we consume so much sugar in our food, in our drinks, and disgusting. And unfortunately, that's fine. Unfortunately, they creep in our food and drinks. I mean, if you went just now and went to your pantry and you picked up every single packet of something, you'd find some form of sugar in there, and tomato sauce, the curry sauces that we have, pasta, anything and everything. And I think they have a way of creeping up on us. So what NZDA decides is that, okay, we can't really take that out from the equation, but what we can control is the amount of fizzy drinks you drink. And you and I both know that sugary drinks are empty calories, and they do not contribute in any way, shape or form to your health, except give you a high, and then you go on a low. And apart from sugar, I mean, an average 335 ML of busy drink has nine to eleven teaspoons of sugar. You wouldn't put that much in your cup of tea, would you? I mean, you can't. But then it also has a lot of salt and acids, and it has a double impact on your teeth. Like the acid erodes your teeth, obviously, and then the sugar, we know what it does to our teeth. And our tamariki. We have over 7000 children that are hospitalized every year for dental infections. And it's not a charming state.
And this is accurate studies. Accurate from about 96% of our eight to twelve year olds consume at least one sugary drink per week. That's 96%. And we have about 17% of our teenagers who consume three or more fizzy drinks a week. And we have two to four year olds. There's about 4% of two to four year olds who do the same. And that was kind of depressing, because who gives visit drinks to two to four year olds, but they are consuming it. And what we see in our clinics is actually a picture of what's happening at home. So this is just a challenge where we encourage Kiwis all across oteroa, across all ages. We have four different categories, individual categories you could join as a fano category, you could join as a team category or a community group category and you could sign up. So the important thing is you sign up and you register at Switchtowater Co NZ and for 30 days, starting from Wednesday, the feast of November, you could switch to water for 30 days. So basically, swap your sugary drinks for water. Drink as much water as you can and there are cool prizes to win. So prizes will range individual prizes of $500 to up to $1,500 for the community schools and prizes.
So all you have to do is go onto the website, switchtowater.co.nz or even NZDA website and fill out a registration form. It's quite simple. It's as simple as that. And that gets you into the game.
So, yeah, I hope you see your registration there, Becky.
[00:46:22] Speaker B: I'm going to do it. Our family are going to do it. Actually, I don't like fizzy drinks. It doesn't work with my gut health program at the moment, so it's right for me. But it might just knock out my diet tonic that I have on a Friday, but that's fine. I can do without that for a month.
[00:46:38] Speaker C: Love a challenge for a month. Yeah. And the registrations are open until 15 November, so you can start anytime between fifth to the 15 November. And look, it's about trying to see if we can have good habits. We are human beings. Nobody is expected to be perfect. And this is what the challenge is all about. You document your journey, you send us an email, see how you went. What are the pitfalls? What about the fault? What about the successes? And then we talk about it and then stuff like that.
[00:47:08] Speaker B: That sounds great. I think people need a challenge because in the primary school that I work in, the parents would be drinking full sugar Coke or a V while their kids are getting their teeth done.
[00:47:21] Speaker C: And I talk to them a little.
[00:47:23] Speaker B: Bit about the effects of that drink on their teeth, but not only their teeth, their gut health as well, since I'm about passionate about that at the moment.
[00:47:31] Speaker C: Oh, gut health, which my gut health program. Okay.
[00:47:39] Speaker B: But it's mostly about keeping the good bugs happy in your stomach and things like Coca Cola knock out most.
You know, you don't want to drink it's not just Coca Cola, it's any sweetened beverage, whether that be milky, fizzy, whatever, it's not good for you at all. So, yeah, this is a great challenge. I love that there's prizes. I hope I win something because I love winning things. But also, I'm going to challenge the staff at the school. I work to do that because they, too have sneaky drinks at their lunchtime, which I'll challenge them to. Maybe they could switch to water and see if they could win something for their kids at their school.
So, yeah, that's a really exciting way to just make a slight difference because, yeah, sweetened beverages do up our sugar consumption by multitudes. In and, yeah, I love the work that you're doing, Anishma, and you've spoken so beautifully about the things that you do. And I saw you on seven sharp doing your mouth guard talk, and I thought, oh, aren't you? You're going to be good in that role. That's what I thought, that we need someone flying the flag for dental therapists, oral health therapists on a national level, doing good things in so gamma he to you, Anishma, you are a champion for oral health in Aotearoa New Zealand. And, yeah, go well, my friend. Sorry that I didn't record it the first time around.
[00:49:11] Speaker C: That's all right. Thank you. It was awesome having this conversation. You don't always get to talk to people who are passionate about oral health as much as you are. So it was a very nice conversation. Thank you for having me on the show and I hope you switch to water and I hope you win something. And, yeah, until we meet again, we'll talk about advocacy and sugar and anything else.
[00:49:33] Speaker B: That's right. I will look forward to it.
[00:49:36] Speaker A: SPONSOR: Clare is a progressive philanthropic foundation that wants more for our people and our planet. Through a proactive approach, Clare invests in ways that positively impact our environment, oral health, youth, well being and woman to create extraordinary change. Check out Claire's website, www.clare.nz, for the mahi that they are doing and supporting and check out the NZDA website for 'switch to water.'
Thank you for listening. Go well, my oral health professional friends, and whānau, ka kite.
