Centre for Evidence Based Dentistry

The Centre for Evidence-based Dentistry (CEBD) was originally established in Oxford in 1995, following a workshop on Evidence-based Dentistry held at Templeton College, Oxford in December 1994. Following discussions with other UK-based, Evidence-based dental groups it helped establish a Virtual Centre for Improving Oral Health (vCIOH) which was launched in 2004. The vCIOH initiated links with the Dental Health Service Research Unit (DHSRU) here in Dundee and this culminated in a decision to move the CEBD to Dundee in 2013.

CEBD was instrumental in establishing the Evidence-based Dentistry Journal, which was initially published as a supplement of the British Dental Journal. The journal became a stand-alone journal in 2000 and achieved Medline recognition in 2004.  

A recent innovation has been the development with Minervation, an evidence-based health care consultancy company, of the Dental Elf Blog as part of a series of health blogs that form part of the National Elf Service. The aim of the service is provide health care professionals with reliable up to date information.  The Dental Elf launched in 2011 and since that time more than 750 blogs have been written and the blog has more than 2000 followers on Twitter and thousands of page views per week.

The Centre has been delivering training events ranging from half-day workshops to 5-day courses in evidence-based dentistry both in the UK and abroad since its inception. The Centre provides specialist advice to the Scottish Dental Clinical Effectiveness Programme and has also provided input to the development of the Department of Health’s Developing Better Health, an evidence-based toolkit for prevention and a range of other evidence-based guidelines both here and abroad. In March 2014 a selective update of the SIGN caries prevention guideline which was chaired by the Director was published.