Known mainly for its work abroad supporting developing countries, Bridge2Aid is now also involved in a project closer to home, as Chief Executive, Shaenna Loughnane, explains.
A couple of years ago Bridge2Aid was approached by Professor Dave Dymock from Bristol University. Bridge2Aid’s office is just outside Bristol, so we have lots of links with Bristol Dental School and several of our volunteers are clinical lecturers there. They were doing lots of outreach, the new dental school in Bristol was opening, and they wanted to improve the Oral Health offering in the city.
Improved outreach
As we know, there’s lack of access to NHS dentistry and that’s certainly the case for many ‘left behind communities’. We set up a conversation and I told him about what we were doing in Malawi where we were training dental therapists to train village volunteers in remote and rural communities to share essential health education prevention messages. We agreed that might work in Bristol and we’ve been doing that for a couple of years now.
How does it work? In years one and two, when students first come on board, they have a circular curriculum, so they have themes that run through the whole five years. In the first year we’ve been talking to students about social responsibility and global oral health as well as the wider global landscape. Then, in the fourth year, we’ve been working with some of the academic staff and the students and they’re putting together a training programme to take into a chosen community in the city and train oral health ambassadors within that community. That’s exactly what we’ve done in Malawi, because community members are the best people to reach their own communities.
Train community members
For example, one of the groups that Bristol Dental School have been involved with is a group of Somalian mothers. The best people to teach that community about oral health are the Somalian mothers and the leaders within that community. They will be trained to then cascade messages out to the rest of their community.
In the last couple of years our focus has been on care homes, with the dental students going in to train care home staff. It’s very interesting that the work we’ve piloted in Malawi, we’re now bringing to the UK to try and make a change here. Hopefully, we can move that into other dental schools and other areas in the country. It’s been a really successful programme.
Opportunities for volunteers
We rely on volunteers, and we’ve now been invited by the CDO in Tanzania to resume bringing our volunteers to them. This means there are more opportunities at the moment than we’ve ever had before for hygienists, therapists and dental nurses. This is especially so for those with a particular interest in oral health education
Post-pandemic, we stopped sending volunteers abroad for a while but now there are more opportunities for people who want to join us to help support our partners, which is great. There are openings for dentists to do skills training on the ground with therapists in Tanzania, and also committing to six months of mentoring, because we don’t want to just train and leave. For us, it’s about long-term relationships.
So, anyone with medical education qualifications or experience would be brilliant for us, either to help with our work here or abroad. But also, if it’s something that someone’s interested in, we can support them in that. Just contact us via our website where there’s a ‘get involved’ tab. Fill out your details and then we’ll be in touch.
About Shaenna
Shaenna Loughnane is Chief Executive of Bridge2Aid. She first volunteered with the charity in 2006 and officially joined the team as UK Operations Director 2011. Shaenna also has experience as a charity consultant, dental practice owner and BDA Good Practice assessor.
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