Approximately 50,000 backpacks filled with fun oral health items are being distributed to more than 600 Minnesota schools as part of Delta Dental of Minnesota Foundation’s Smiles@School program.

The program provides first-graders across Minnesota with tools to help them care for their teeth, including a toothbrush, fluoridated toothpaste, a water bottle, an educational booklet, and other fun items.

The program also involves dental experts providing sealants and fluoride treatments to roughly 4,000 at-risk second-graders in schools across Minnesota.

In Austin, all four elementaries — Sumner, Southgate, Neveln and Banfield as well as Pacelli Catholic Schools — will benefit from this program as well as first-graders at Blooming Prairie, Hayfield and LeRoy-Ostrander.

The three-pronged Smiles@School program offers oral health education to Minnesota first-graders, preventive care to second-graders at schools with high rates of poverty, and plans to assess the oral health of third-graders in a 2020 survey led by the Minnesota Department of Health.

The goal of the program is to get kids on the right track for maintaining lifelong healthy smiles.