Guide for Children with Dental Anxiety Wins the Best Patient Driven Innovation/ Collaboration Award

A self-help guide for children who are scared of the dentist called ‘Your teeth you are in control’ won the award at the Innovation Improvement Impact Conference held by Yorkshire and Humber Academic Health Science Network in Leeds on the 31st January 2018.

The CBT Team.
The Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) team

The development of the resources was led by Professor Zoe Marshman, Prof Helen Rodd and Prof Sarah Baker at the School of Clinical Dentistry, University of Sheffield and uses Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) techniques to reduce children’s anxiety about going to the dentist.

The research was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and the team worked with 48 children and their families at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and a community dental clinic in Derbyshire.


We are absolutely delighted to have won this award primarily for all of the children who helped devise the guide, and for all of the young people and their families whose lives will be improved.

Professor Sarah Baker

School of Clinical Dentistry


The resources, which are available online http://dental.llttf.com or in a paper version (available to order), have been designed with children to help them work with their dentist. The team found that 73 per cent of children felt a lot less worried about visiting the dentist after using the resources. The research was published in the international journal ‘JDR Clinical and Translational Research’, funded by a grant from the National Institute for Health Research and sponsored by Sheffield Teaching Hospitals Trust. Paper: ‘Development and Testing of a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Resource for Children’s Dental Anxiety’ JDR Clinical & Translational Research. Vol 2, Issue 1, pp. 23 – 37 DOI:10.1177/2380084416673798

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