About Us

Simple Steps To Better Dental Health is a comprehensive dental-information website developed and owned by Aetna Inc. The site is hosted by Aetna and not by any third-party website on which it is found.

Visit Simple Steps To Better Dental Health® for answers to all your oral health questions.

You'll find information on prevention, conditions, tests, treatments and more. You'll also find illustrations and interactive tools that help you visualize information, and learn how to keep your teeth and mouth healthy. Find information for yourself or go to our Parents' Guide for information about your infant or child. Our Fun For Kids area lets children learn about oral health through games and activities.

You can keep up to date with new advances by checking on the news. Find professional responses to questions submitted by users like you in our Ask The Dentist feature. Our section on Oral Health and Your Body explains how other conditions can affect your oral health and how the health of your mouth can affect the rest of your body.

Visit us often to find new tools and resources. We are here to provide the dental information you want.

Simple Steps To Better Dental Health is a full-service website created out of the need for better education about dental health and the emergence of the Internet as a pre-eminent tool for delivering health information.

According to the U.S. National Institutes of Health, dental caries (cavities) is the single most common childhood disease. Most adults in the United States show signs of periodontal (gum) disease, yet less than two-thirds have visited a dentist in the past year. Many elderly adults take medications or have diseases that affect their oral health, yet they often lack the care they need.

We make it easy for people of all ages to find the information they need in language they can understand.

Content on this site is reviewed by faculty of Columbia University College of Dental Medicine, one of the top dental schools in the nation. Since its inception in 1852 and its incorporation into Columbia University in 1917, the dental school has vigorously pursued its commitment to education, patient care and research. The dental school was previously known as Columbia University School of Dental and Oral Surgery (SDOS)

Recognizing the value to the public and the dental specialties, SDOS established the first formal specialty education program in orthodontics in the 1920s. SDOS went on to establish programs in periodontics, endodontics, oral/maxillofacial surgery, prosthodontics, pediatric dentistry and advanced programs.

SDOS provides general dentistry, oral surgery, pediatric dentistry, orthodontics and other clinic services to many members of the community through its Faculty Practice, Postgraduate and Specialty Practice, and Undergraduate Clinic. SDOS encourages and supports all forms of academic research efforts that have direct impact on improving oral health by fostering faculty and student participation in research and training students in current research methodologies.

Simple Steps To Better Dental Health has an experienced staff of Web-savvy technologists. The website is built on industry-standard software and hardware. Our Web-server application has been developed to avoid interruptions in service. If something breaks, backup components continue to keep the site operating. Our systems are located at a secure, offsite data center, which gives us one-hop access to the Internet backbone and to other carrier (ISP) networks and keeps us available to site users. This data center provides our systems with security, continuous power, plenty of bandwidth, and protection from typical environmental disturbances. We routinely monitor the capacity and use of our resources so we can develop additional capacity before problems occur.