Our council votes Tuesday on restarting community water fluoridation, and I’m making the case that upstream policy plus school sealant programs cuts disease and costs. If you’ve been through this, what messages and local data moved decision-makers outside health — budget folks, school boards, neighborhood leaders?
Tuesday votes tend to flip when budget folks see their own numbers: put a one-pager comparing the plant’s annual fluoridation cost to last year’s local ED visits for preventable dental pain + school absentee days, with a line citing ROI from an external source (e.g., https://www.thecommunityguide.org/findings/dental-caries-community-water-fluoridation.html). What moved ours was showing that delaying one year cost more than the chemical and equipment — — but have a fallback: if they stall, lock in funding for school-based sealants this fall. Do you have Medicaid/ED cost pulls you can use?
Had the kazoo once last month — , drives me nuts. What fixed it was drilling a tiny palatal vent with a 1 mm round bur at try-in to bleed off trapped air/saliva, then closing it at delivery, and double-checking the posterior palatal seal; if it still whistles, a thin smear of adhesive on the border shows the leak in seconds. @CaseyLi this saved me more chair time than yet another remount.