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–49K]).
• The local program that sponsors the school sealant events can generate a report across all schools (see sample program report [PDF–37K]).
• 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.