Ruth Floate

Ruth is the manager of INTERVAL, an NHS commissioned and funded Clinical Trial. The principal research question is ‘For optimum, cost-effective maintenance of oral health in adult patients, what is the best interval between regular dental check-ups? Is it 6 months, risk-based or 24 months?’ The Trial is UK wide, involves 55 dental practices and ultimately 2288 patient participants. The results (available in August 2018) will be published as widely as possible in academic and professional journals in addition to the popular press as an aide to decision making by policy makers, dental practitioners and patients.

Ruth’s interests are in improving oral health care by making high quality research evidence accessible to practitioners, policy makers, patients and the general public in order to support decision-making.

She is also the Consumer Co-ordinator for the Cochrane Oral Health Group (based at the University of Manchester) and has revised, re-written and commented on Plain Language Summaries for reviews produced by them on existing research.

Previous experience includes increasing opportunities for people from a diverse range of backgrounds to benefit from higher and further education and managing large scale complex projects delivering a wide range of arts and entertainment events for local authorities and commercial companies.