Research

1 • Surveillance and Oral Health Monitoring at the Population Level

Background

Over the past three decades, DHSRU has built up an international reputation for its collaborative work in dental epidemiology and health surveillance at the population level. This work continues to develop on a number of fronts.

Progress highlighting oral health monitoring in adults and children in 2010

1) Adult Dental Health Survey for England, Wales and Northern Ireland (ADHS - E,W&NI): The First Release (http://www.ic.nhs.uk/pubs/dentalsurvey09) presents preliminary results on the proportion of the population who are dentate, self-reported dental attendance and dental anxiety from the 2009 Adult Dental Health Survey. A series of more detailed reports will be published electronically in March 2011. This Survey, the 5th in a series of national decennial dental surveys, was commissioned by the NHS Information Centre for Health and Social Care and was conducted by the Office for National Statistics working in consortium with other agencies and the Universities of Birmingham, Cardiff, Dundee, Newcastle, and University College London. The survey consisted of an interview with all adults at sampled households and an oral examination of adults with at least one natural tooth. A total of 11,380 individuals were interviewed, and 6,469 dentate adults were examined, making this the largest ever UK epidemiological survey of adult dental health.

2) New approaches to monitoring Adult Dental Health in Scotland: The Unit Director is part of a group convened by the Chief Dental Officer in Scotland (together with representatives of the Information Services Division, NHS Boards and Glasgow University) seeking to develop new and more efficient ways to assemble robust surveillance data.

3) Developing the NHS/ British Association for the Study of Community Dentistry (BASCD) Dental Epidemiology Programme: Working with a range of NHS partners across the UK, this Programme, which has been running for more than two decades, is being developed to cope with different legal bases of consent and different NHS needs across the devolved UK. Illustrative papers are in press.

4) Collaborating with the International Association for Dental Research (IADR) and FDI World Dental Federation on the use of ICDAS for epidemiology: The International Caries Assessment and Detection System (ICDAS) methodology (co-developed by the Unit, Dundee Dental School staff and international Collaborators) is increasingly being used for epidemiology and the National Child Dental Health Survey of Iceland reported in 2010 is an exemplar. In Latin America, the IADR Regional Development Programme has been undertaking training and standardisation of trainers on ICDAS criteria for assessing dental caries in infants. In phase I, one trainer from eight Latin American countries was trained and calibrated by an ICDAS trainer and an epidemiologist. In phase II, these eight trainers trained examiners in their own countries. Phase III will involve Epidemiological Pilot studies. Excellent reliability data has been achieved and, for the first time, comparable data across the full range of caries severity for infants in these countries is being collected. This work has dovetailed with DHSRU’s work with the FDI’s Global Caries Initiative (GCI). We have contributed to GCI events in Kuwait; Dubai and Brazil during the year.

Images below

The front page of the “Adult Dental Health Survey 2009 - First Release” is shown with the material from the IADR Regional Development Programme to train and standardise lead survey examiners in eight Latin American countries.

Impact Statement

Through DHSRU’s research and development activities in survey methodology, the Unit has continued to influence policy and practice in the surveillance of oral health and disease at the local, UK National and International levels.