Special Olympics Special Smiles: Special Olympics Special Smiles (SOSS) is a dental screening, education and referral program

that operates under the auspices of Special Olympics Inc. (SOI). The program was developed in 1993, and first implemented at Massachusetts Special Olympics Games that year. The Boston University Goldman School of Dental Medicine helped manage SOSS until it was officially recognized and adopted by SOI in 1997. The program is now one of the lead components of SOI's "Healthy Athletes" initiative, created to focus attention on the overall health issues facing Special Olympics athletes. Each SOSS event includes a registration/check-in station, a non-invasive dental screening, a dental hygiene education station, an athletic mouthguard station for athletes participating in contact sports, a fluoride varnish application station, and a final station at which the athletes receive "Goody Bags." The Goody Bags contain oral hygiene aids plus other items donated by sponsors. Dental screenings are used as a means to increase awareness of the state of the athletes oral health for the athletes themselves, as well as their

parents and/or caregivers. Data is collected for each athlete on whom we provide a dental screening and is compiled and analyzed to encourage more dental and dental hygiene schools to increase the educational courses they offer on caring for special needs patients, and to demonstrate to government legislators on all levels that access to oral health providers for this population must be increased. SOSS has found that most dental professionals, especially those who don't usually treat patients with special needs, leave at the end of the day with a much greater appreciation of the problems that these individuals face, and in many cases a commitment to get involved. Nineteen years ago, one dentist, another dental hygienist and I started this program for the summer games in Maryland. To this day, we continue this program bringing dental students, dental professionals and a few high school students together to break down the barriers in working with this special needs population.