Brushing twice a day are great words to live by but certainly don’t substitute professional dental care, according to a recent study by the University of South Carolina on dental coverage. Their results showed that 25 percent of children in the United States had failed to receive dental care in the previous year and the percentage of African-American children without dental coverage was even higher, making this an alarming statistic. The lack of adequate dental care has long been linked to oral health infections, diabetes, lung and heart cancer, and even stroke, all common ills in the African-American community. Tooth decay is the single most common chronic childhood malady, the study reports, which adds to the issues that support why children need good dental coverage during this developmental period in their lives. —BB