Dental Hygiene and Family Involvement

The name of our organization is Akwai. We received a grant from ASU which we used to examine over 500 individual pieces of research that was collected from 1960 through 2015. The knowledge we gained helped us develop a mobile app that is used to host dental hygiene competitions. Not only do these competitions improve oral health, but it also gets the students’ family members involved in supporting their academic goals and college aspirations.  

During the competition; students will form teams with their parents to compete against the other student-parent teams at that school. Students will earn gift cards to Best Buy, Amazon and Walmart when they get uncles, aunts, grandparents and other relatives involved in the contest. They also will gain points as they use our app to answer weekly questions about their dental hygiene. During the six month competition, the app will track their progress and allow them to earn mini awards along the way. 

When students see that increasing their brushing and flossing will improve their oral health, then it is easier to convince them that increasing effort in their schoolwork will improve their opportunities in the future. For this reason we send the student-parent teams to a local dentist for two checkups. One before the competition and one after. This is a win-win for us, so we’re not looking for you to give discounted appointments or pay any commission for families we send you. The value of our program is greatly increased when we have an actual dentist who can verify the effort our students say they are putting toward their dental hygiene.