Dental Public Health at a Glance

Ivor G. Chestnutt

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781118629406
• eBook ISBN: 9781118629390
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Dentistry

Dental Public Health at a Glance

Books in Wiley's Dentistry at a Glance series are ideal study aids for undergraduate dental students and recently qualified dentists. All follow the same student-friendly style; each chapter is presented in a double-page spread with clear, easy-to-follow diagrams, supported by succinct explanatory text.

Dentistry at a Glance books are essential introductory guides to a wide range of topics in dentistry. The explanatory text outlines the key concepts and each bite-sized chapter is superbly illustrated to aid visual learning and understanding.

Everything you need to know about Dental Public Health... at a Glance!

Dental Public Health at a Glance presents a richly-illustrated introduction to dental and oral health issues in communities and populations. Offering comprehensive coverage of this increasingly important field, each topic is presented in an easy-to-comprehend two-page spread with essential facts clearly summarized and accompanied by tables, illustrations and diagrams.

Dental Public Health at a Glance covers a wide range of key concepts including:

• Epidemiology
• Evidence-based dentistry
• Oral health promotion
• The relationship of fluoride, diet, smoking, and alcohol to oral health
• Assessment of health needs
• Quality assurance in the provision of dental care
• Considerations for a dental public health career

Written by an expert in dental public health and offering illuminating insights into oral health at the population level, this is a must-have introductory textbook and revision guide for dentistry and dental hygiene and therapy students.

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Part 1
Introduction

Chapters

1. 1 What is dental public health?
2. 2 Health, oral health and their determinants

1
What is dental public health?

Dental public health is the science and the art of preventing oral disease, promoting oral health and improving the quality of life through the organized efforts of society.

In contrast to clinical dental practice, where the focus is on looking after individual patients, in dental public health practice the focus is on populations or defined groups within a population. The definition here refers to science. Dental public health requires a sound knowledge of the factors influencing the aetiology, detection, measurement, description and prevention of oral disease and the promotion of oral health. It also refers to art. This involves advocacy, policy development and the politics of how dental care is prioritized, organized, monitored and paid for in societies.

The key components of dental public health practice and how these relate to one another are shown in Figure 1.1. The core values of public health practice are as in Table 1.1.

Figure 1.1 Components of Dental Public Health Practice

Table 1.1 Core values of public health practice as defined by the Faculty of Public Health in the UK

Equitable Empowering Effective Evidence based Fair Inclusive

A comparison between clinical dental practice and dental public health practice is shown in Table 1.2

Table 1.2 A comparison between clinical dental practice and dental public health

Individual clinical practice	Public health practice
Individual patients	Populations and defined groups within populations
Examination	Epidemiology, surveys
Diagnosis	Assessment of need
Treatment planning	Prioritization and programme planning
Informed consent for treatment	Ethics and planning approval
An appropriate mix of care, cure and prevention	Programme implementation
Payment for services	Programme budgeting/finance
Evaluation	Appraisal and review

The public health approach

The Faculty of Public Health, the professional body that is responsible for setting standards in public health practice in the UK, describes the public health approach as:

• population based
• emphasizing collective responsibility for health, its protection and disease prevention
• recognizing the key role of the state, linked to a concern for the underlying socio-economic and wider determinants of health, as well as disease
• emphasizing partnerships with all those who contribute to the health of the population.

How this applies to dental public health is shown in Table 1.3.

Table 1.3 The public health approach as applied to dentistry

...

Dental public health: Is concerned with the oral health of populations in a city or defined geographical area in a particular group of the population defined by a common demographic, e.g. children, older people in a group of people with social circumstances in common, e.g. homeless people, people with drug and substance abuse problems. Recognizes that responsibility for health and prevention of oral disease is shared between individual people and healthcare professionals, and that people should be empowered to look after their own health. Is conscious that as health is markedly linked to people’s lifestyles and life circumstances, it needs to take account of how the risk of poor oral health is not equal across populations, e.g. levels of dental caries in children are closely correlated with social and economic deprivation. Implies that to improve health, it is necessary to work on policy development at a high level and across disciplines. As an example, legislation making the wearing of seat belts compulsory is important in preventing facial injuries in road traffic accidents; taxing tobacco sales is important in moderating smoking. In health improvement programmes in schools, dental public health practitioners need to work outside health and collaborate with school teachers and education authorities.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front matter
• Title page
• Copyright
• Preface
• Part 1 Introduction
• Part 2 Epidemiology
• Part 3 Evidence-based dentistry
• Part 4 Oral health promotion
• Part 5 Fluoride and oral health
• Part 6 Diet and oral health
• Part 7 Smoking and oral health
• Part 8 Alcohol and oral health
• Part 9 Assessing health needs
• Part 10 Providing dental services
• Part 11 Quality assurance of dental care
• Part 12 A career in dental public health
• Index
• EULA