Turning your dental practice into a Community Health Hub
- Polly Bhambra
- Sep 1
- 4 min read
Want to turn your practice into a Community Health Hub? Polly explores how to grow and empower a dental team to do it.
We all know the feeling: the diary is full, the phones are ringing, compliance never sleeps – and yet the wider oral-health picture in our community isn’t moving fast enough.
If dentistry is to become more than a place where problems are fixed, we have to step beyond the surgery and meet people where they live.
That’s what a Community Health Hub does. It extends your practice’s impact into schools and high streets, turning prevention into a year-round, team-led habit – not a seasonal campaign.
This isn’t airy theory. It’s a playbook any practice can adopt – one that builds prevention and brand trust at the same time.
Why now?
Three currents are colliding.
First, national campaigns like National Smile Month keep public attention on the basics: brush with fluoride, cut sugar, visit regularly.
The momentum shouldn’t end in June. Use it as a springboard.
Second, access pressures remain real.
The government’s Dental Recovery Plan tried to stimulate activity with a ‘new patient premium,’ dental vans and ‘golden hello’ incentives.
But parliamentary scrutiny has since questioned its impact and value for money.
Third, we have proof that school-based prevention works.
Scotland’s Childsmile and Wales’s Designed to Smile have shown that supervised toothbrushing and home-pack support can reach tens of thousands of children every year.
In 2023/24, Designed to Smile supported 59,079 children in nursery/primary settings. Along with distributing 167,695 home packs.
This is evidence that simple, repeated interventions scale.
Closer to many of our clinics, the BrightBites programme – delivered by Denplan – has reached around 30,000 children, pairing lively education with take-home resources.
These are practical proof-points that outreach is doable for busy teams. Especially when you plug into existing frameworks.
What a Community Health Hub looks like
A Community Health Hub is less a building than a mindset.
It weaves three strands through your year:
School engagement – assemblies, class workshops, teacher packs, toothbrushing demos, diet games, and parent evenings
Wellness add-ons – services that sit naturally alongside dentistry: oral-cancer screening pop-ups, blood-pressure checks during Oral Cancer Awareness Month, sleep-apnoea risk chats and nutrition talks
Charity partnerships – consistent support for one or two local causes (youth hubs, foodbanks, homeless outreach), with staff-volunteering days and campaign-linked donations.
Do this with integrity and you’ll see three flywheels start to turn: better prevention, stronger brand trust, and easier recruitment.
Empower your greatest asset: dental nurses
If you want this to be credible and sustainable, put dental nurses at the centre.
The GDC’s working-patterns analysis shows dental nurses are predominantly employed, largely single-site and perform a mix of clinical and non-clinical roles – the exact profile you need for consistent community relationships and repeat visits to the same schools.
Formalise ambassador roles (with time and recognition) and you’ll unlock energy you didn’t know you had.
Practical moves:
Create community ambassador posts for nurses with protected
Fund train-the-trainer style CPD: delivering a school session, safeguarding basics, handling Q&A with parents
Build ready-to-go kits
Rotate opportunities so outreach becomes part of career development.
Measure what matters (and tell people)
A Community Health Hub isn’t charity for charity’s sake; it’s purposeful prevention with accountability. Track:
Reach
Referrals & PR
Pipeline: new patient enquiries with a school or event source
Workforce.
Put the numbers in your annual report and on your website.
Patients and partners want to support practices that prove impact.
Make it easy to say yes
Schools are time-poor.
Send a one-page menu with three options (20-minute assembly; 45-minute class workshop; parent evening pop-up) plus what you’ll bring, what you’ll need (usually a screen or floor space) and safeguarding details.
Offer dates, not open-ended ‘let us know’.
For partners, align missions: supermarkets (sugar awareness), sports clubs (mouthguards), libraries (screening pop-ups), youth charities (toothbrushing kits).
Where appropriate, piggy-back national programmes like BrightBites so your team plugs into tested content and ready-made materials.
‘But we’re busy’
Pick one school (the closest) and do one great visit each term. Quality beats quantity
Bundle content: record your school demo as a short reel; turn the slides into a printable one-pager; email it to parents via the school office
Protect time: two hours, twice a month, for your Community Ambassadors. It will repay itself in goodwill, word-of-mouth, and recruitment.
The underrated benefit
Purpose attracts people.
New graduates and experienced DCPs consistently tell me they want to work where care extends beyond the practice.
Share your outreach wins in job packs and interviews: ‘We taught 900 local children this year; every nurse gets paid outreach time.’
It’s more persuasive than any generic ‘we’re a friendly practice’ line – and it reflects the reality of today’s workforce values highlighted in the GDC data.
A final word on prevention as identity
When 22.4% of five-year-olds in England have experienced dentinal decay – rising far higher in deprived areas – we cannot content ourselves with polishing the same stones inside the four walls of our surgeries.
Community Hubs won’t solve access alone, but they will change trajectories.
The beauty of this approach is that it is team-led.
Our dental nurses are natural educators and organisers; our therapists bring preventive expertise; our reception teams are community connectors.
Give them the mandate, the time, and the tools – and watch your practice’s reputation, prevention outcomes and recruitment soar.
Start with one school next month.
Put two Community Ambassadors in your rota.
Say yes when the supermarket asks for a health stand.
Track what happens. In twelve months, you won’t just feel like a Community Health Hub – you’ll be one.
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