Spring 2013 - Tufts University School of Dental Medicine

Jenny Citrin, D14, works with
students at the Josiah Quincy
Upper School to develop iSmile,
an educational video game app.
Education with Byte
Jenny Citrin, D14, invents a computer game that helps kids teach
kids about oral health by Julie Flaherty
he weapons on his utility
belt are a toothbrush and floss.
Cookies and candy are the enemies.
And should his strength
start to ebb, fluoride makes him all but
invincible. His name is Tom; he is a gradeschool
superhero, and he is coming soon to
a video game near you.
Tom is the main character of iSmile, a
kind of third-person-flosser app that educates
children about proper dental care.
Jenny Citrin, D14, a Schweitzer Fellow,
conceived iSmile as an offbeat way to head
off oral disease in the next generation. She
is creating the game with a group of teenagers
at the Josiah Quincy Upper School
in Boston’s Chinatown neighborhood. The
students will eventually use iSmile, with
its message of good oral health, to teach
elementary school students. The idea is to
hit young kids where they live: video games,
mobile devices and looking up to cool highschoolers
(“peer-to-peer learning,” as the
education experts call it).
“Education is the way we’re going to
address preventative oral health, which is
the most important aspect of oral health
and dentistry as I see it,” Citrin says.
Conventional dental education hasn’t made
a big enough impact, she says, perhaps
because it “isn’t that much fun.”
The team meets Tuesday afternoons in
a computer lab at the high school. While
snacking on pretzel rods and cheese sticks,
Citrin and a half dozen teens talk about
Closeup of the game in development.
how Tom will have to navigate the game’s
food obstacles. “Nutrition is one of the very
overlooked aspects of dental health,” Citrin
says. Tom will have to pick the good foods
and avoid the bad ones—dentally speaking,
that is. And not just the obvious ones, such
as opting for apples over gummy bears. As
the player reaches higher levels, the choice
becomes more nuanced: apple or…banana
They have a storyboard, but there is
still much to decide. Will the game be
like Temple Run, or have more of a Mario
Brothers vibe “I think we moved away from
Pac Man,” Citrin reminds the team.
After some voting, all agree that players
can earn points by completing minigames
that show how to brush and floss properly.
The ending is still uncertain. If Tom does
poorly, does he get a mouth full of cavities
The team breaks up into groups to work
on details before heading over to the dental
school for a tour. Some of the students are
interested in going into health fields; others
just like video games or art.
While things are going well, Citrin has
to admit that getting high school students
excited about oral health can be a hard
sell, especially when she is competing with
homework and college applications for their
attention. Citrin didn’t grow up as a gamer
herself (she plans to subcontract the coding
to an outside programmer), and her primary
teaching experience has been as a gymnastics
instructor (she was a competitive gymnast
for many years). Keeping things on
track can be as difficult as connecting back
handsprings on the balance beam.
Still, her mentors at the Schweitzer
Fellowship Program, which encourages
graduate students to address the health
needs of the underserved, warned her that
these endeavors rarely go exactly as planned.
“They tell you, ‘You are never going to finish
a project the way you started it,’ ” she says.
For now, she is enjoying hearing all the
silly and sometimes-inspired suggestions
that the students offer. “They have so many
creative ideas,” she says. “I don’t know where
they come up with all of them.”
photos: alonso nichols
spring 2013 tufts dental medicine 37