Lessons in a Lunchbox founder receives Excellence in Action for Dental Health Award
Winifred Booker, D.D.S., honored at ADA Dentist and Student Lobby Day
The 2023 president of the Maryland State Dental Association and founder of the Children’s Oral Health Institute is the recipient of the 2023 Excellence in Action for Dental Health Award from the ADA Council on Government Affairs. The award was presented April 8 at the seventh annual ADA Dentist and Student Lobby Day.
Winifred Booker, D.D.S., is a pediatric dentist who has practiced in Maryland for more than 35 years. In 1996, she founded the Children’s Oral Health Institute, which develops innovative techniques to deliver dental care to children and provide oral health lessons to both children and adults. Specifically, the institute’s Lessons in a Lunchbox program is a nationally recognized oral health literacy program for elementary-aged children that has been presented at many schools across the country since launching in 2008. She also founded Highchair Dental Care for Infants and Toddlers, a technique to deliver dental care to infants and toddlers that utilizes highchairs.
Dr. Booker has also served on the Society of American Indian Dentists and the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry.
“Dr. Booker has an outstanding history of service to the dental profession and organized dentistry,” said Leigh Kent, D.D.S., chair of the ADA Council on Government Affairs, while presenting the award. “As the 2023 award recipient, Dr. Booker has demonstrated outstanding passion, devotion and commitment to improving the oral health of children.”
Now in its third and final year, the annual Excellence in Action for Dental Health Award recognizes stakeholders who have advanced the ADA’s Action for Dental Health initiatives in their state. Signed into law in 2018, the legislative bill was created to expand initiatives to improve oral health care access. It works to provide care for people who suffer from untreated dental disease, to strengthen and expand the private and public safety net, and to bring disease prevention and education into communities.
Dr. Booker praised the dental students in attendance at Lobby Day for helping to bring the Lessons in a Lunchbox program to life, noting that 61 out of 73 dental schools have presented this program around the country.
“I am especially thrilled to receive this award before this audience, because it is, in fact, because of student dentists that the Lessons in a Lunchbox program came to be what it is today,” Dr. Booker said.
According to Dr. Booker, the Lessons in a Lunchbox program has reached 71,000 children in all 50 states, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, Haiti and the Bahamas.
“[This is] because of the support of the American Dental Association and many of your members. From Maryland to California, from Maine to Texas, you have been all hands on deck. It has been my brainchild, but I could not have done it without the support, encouragement and love from all of you.”
