Sealant Efficiency Assessment for Locals and States (SEALS)
SEALS software helps states and communities evaluate the effectiveness and
efficiency of their school dental sealant programs. As part of a comprehensive
package that includes technical support and data collection forms, the
Excel-based software automates
- The capture, storage, and analysis of data on the oral health status of
participating children.
- The types and numbers of services delivered at school events.
- The costs and logistics of events, e.g., personnel, equipment,
materials, and travel.
Examples of summary and performance measures generated by SEALS are cost per
child receiving sealants, sealant retention, averted caries, and number of
children sealed per chair-hour. These measures are available on reports
generated for three levels of analysis:
- The summary and performance measures for a single school sealant event
can be generated (see sample event
report).
 (PDF–66K)
- The local program that sponsors the school sealant events can generate a
report across all schools (see sample program
report).(PDF–65K)
- Companion software called SEALS_Admin amasses all of the data from the
individual programs and produces statewide values of the summary and
performance measures. It also ranks the individual programs on 15 critical
summary/performance measures.
Helps justify programs
Oral health program managers can use SEALS data to measure the cost and
impact of their sealant program. Documenting that sealant programs are a good
use of state resources helps programs to get additional support that allows them
to serve more children. Wisconsin, the first state to pilot-test SEALS,
generated data that helped convince legislators to double state funding for the
state’s sealant programs (see generic one-page report drawn from actual
data).(PDF–92K)
Helps increase efficiency
Oral health program managers can use SEALS data to rank school events by need
and costs to allocate their scarce resources more efficiently. States can
compare local sealant programs on costs, output, and efficiency. The software
can also help them formulate goals, and assess less efficient programs. Both
Wisconsin and Colorado have used SEALS data to allocate funding among local
programs.
Package offers latest software, support
Software, training, and limited technical support for SEALS are now
available. For more information, please send inquiries to
oralhealth@cdc.gov.
One or more documents on this Web page is available in Portable Document Format
(PDF). You will need Acrobat
Reader to view and print these documents.
Page last reviewed: November 19, 2009
Page last modified: November 19, 2009
Content source:
Division of Oral Health,
National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and
Health Promotion |
