Dental services will soon be inside schools and some day cares across south-central Kentucky

Thanks to a $250,000 grant from the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky, the Barren River District Health Department is looking to help save the teeth of school kids regardless of their ability to pay.

It's a plan that will bring dental education into the classroom.

"What we're wanting to do with the dental health program is to actually change a generation of thought, so that more folks begin to value dental health rather than just react to the problem," said Dennis Chaney, with the Barren River District Health Dept.

Chaney says with a parents permission, kindergartners through seniors across an eight-county area will soon have the opportunity for free dental care.

"We'll be purchasing mobile dental equipment that we will wheel right into the school and provide dental screenings by a dentist, and that dentist will write orders for the preventive dentistry that our dental hygienist will be doing on-site in the schools," Chaney said.

The program partners with existing dentists in the area and will provide an additional access point for preventive dentistry.

"Our partnership with schools, as it relates to our school-nurse program has been so successful and so widely accepted, that this is just another piece of that overall puzzle to our strategic focus as it relates to health wellness for staff and children," Chaney said.

Chaney says the program will first focus on four counties -- Barren, Edmonson, Hart and Metcalfe, and day cares owned and operated by Community Action.

Chaney hopes for the program to actually be in the schools before the end of April