Essential Dental Public Health

Author(s):  
Blánaid Daly ◽  
Paul Batchelor ◽  
Elizabeth Treasure ◽  
Richard Watt

Public health is a key concern of modern dental practitioners as they continue to play a vital role in the health of populations across the world. The second edition of Essential Dental Public Health identifies the links between clinical practice and public health with a strong emphasis on evidence-based medicine. Fully revised and updated for a second edition, this textbook is split into four parts covering all the need-to-know aspects of the subject: the principles of dental public health, oral epidemiology, prevention and oral health promotion, and the governance and organization of health services. Essential Dental Public Health is an ideal introduction to the field for dentistry undergraduates, as well as being a helpful reference for postgraduates and practitioners.

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akadiri Oladimeji Adeniyi ◽  
Adeyemo Wasiu Lanre

BackgroundEvidence-based dentistry (EBD) is becoming popular all over the world with the increasing global involvement of dental practitioners in the debates on the relevance or otherwise of EBD. However, very little has been known on the evolutionary trend of EBD in the developing countries of the world.Aims and ObjectivesThis pilot study was designed to assess the state of EBD in the accredited dental schools in Nigeria as an example of a developing economy.MethodologyAn electronic search was conducted for articles on the subject of EBD emanating into the world dental literature from Nigeria as a measure of activities in the field of EBD in the country. Further investigation was done by way of interviews of faculty members and resident doctors in the four fully accredited dental schools in Nigeria. The subject of the interview was premised around the evaluation of activities in the field of EBD.ResultsOnly 6 relevant articles were found in the search. The interviews however revealed an increasing awareness but low level of knowledge of the principles of EBD in the dental schools. Major obstacles were infrastructural limitations and lack of personal motivations. The enthusiasm of the younger faculties and resident doctors was notable.ConclusionIt was obvious that EBD is yet to assume the desired momentum in the 21stcentury in Nigeria. It is however gladdening that there is a promising future for EBD with the rising enthusiasm noted among the younger generation of clinicians.


2001 ◽  
Vol os8 (3) ◽  
pp. 99-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth D Holt

Dental public health has been defined as ‘the science and art of preventing oral diseases, promoting oral health and improving the quality of life through the organised efforts of society’.1 Dental practitioners most often have the oral health of individual patients as their primary focus but the aim of public health is to benefit populations.2 Early developments in dental public health were concerned largely with demonstrating levels of disease and with treatment services. With greater appreciation of the nature of oral health and disease, and of their determinants has come recognition of the need for wider public health action if the effects of prevention and oral health promotion are to be maximised.


2009 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 298-305 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Bradt

AbstractEvidence is defined as data on which a judgment or conclusion may be based. In the early 1990s, medical clinicians pioneered evidence-based decision-making. The discipline emerged as the use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients. The practice of evidence-based medicine required the integration of individual clinical expertise with the best available, external clinical evidence from systematic research and the patient's unique values and circumstances. In this context, evidence acquired a hierarchy of strength based upon the method of data acquisition.Subsequently, evidence-based decision-making expanded throughout the allied health field. In public health, and particularly for populations in crisis, three major data-gathering tools now dominate: (1) rapid health assessments; (2) population based surveys; and (3) disease surveillance. Unfortunately, the strength of evidence obtained by these tools is not easily measured by the grading scales of evidence-based medicine. This is complicated by the many purposes for which evidence can be applied in public health—strategic decision-making, program implementation, monitoring, and evaluation. Different applications have different requirements for strength of evidence as well as different time frames for decision-making. Given the challenges of integrating data from multiple sources that are collected by different methods, public health experts have defined best available evidence as the use of all available sources used to provide relevant inputs for decision-making.


2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (S1) ◽  
pp. S16-S16
Author(s):  
M. Musalek

Every medical intervention is embedded in the prevailing spirit of its particular time. The world of modern medicine that is still shaped by positivism is often revered as a world of rational calculation and reason, a world in which mathematical calculation and so-called objectivity are prized above all else. Indeed, today's modern medicine in general and its battlewagon evidence-based medicine is a world of sober number games, reduction and fragmentation, of demystification and de-subjectification. As important and indispensable the achievements of EbM are, it nevertheless needs to be expanded by a medicine, which focuses not just on illness and its treatment but which places the concrete individual with all his or her sufferings and potentials. Such a human-based medicine (HbM) is no longer indebted to modern positivism, but seeks its foundations in the maxims of post-modernism. Moving away from classical “indication-based medicine” toward a medicine based on human sufferings and potentials necessarily requires a fundamental change in diagnostics and treatment.Disclosure of interestThe author has not supplied his declaration of competing interest.


2011 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 525-527 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yára Dadalti Fragoso

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic neurological disease that typically affects young adults. A recent publication suggested that MS might originate from insufficient blood drainage in certain areas of the central nervous system. The condition was named chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency (CCSVI). Other papers have not confirmed these findings and, therefore, the matter remains controversial. Nineteen months after the original publication on CCSVI and MS, another 22 papers have been published addressing the matter. No clinical trials have been carried out on the subject and there is no evidence-based indication to perform surgical vascular procedures in MS patients. However, over the same nineteen-month period, the internet discussion on the subject of CCSVI and MS has led to countless websites advertising treatment using vascular surgery for patients with MS all over the world. The treatment based on the CCSVI theory has appealingly been called "liberation treatment", thus making it difficult to explain to patients why a treatment that has been highly praised (on the internet) cannot be recommended based on partial medical results that await confirmation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 99 (5) ◽  
pp. 481-487 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Meng ◽  
F. Hua ◽  
Z. Bian

The epidemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), originating in Wuhan, China, has become a major public health challenge for not only China but also countries around the world. The World Health Organization announced that the outbreaks of the novel coronavirus have constituted a public health emergency of international concern. As of February 26, 2020, COVID-19 has been recognized in 34 countries, with a total of 80,239 laboratory-confirmed cases and 2,700 deaths. Infection control measures are necessary to prevent the virus from further spreading and to help control the epidemic situation. Due to the characteristics of dental settings, the risk of cross infection can be high between patients and dental practitioners. For dental practices and hospitals in areas that are (potentially) affected with COVID-19, strict and effective infection control protocols are urgently needed. This article, based on our experience and relevant guidelines and research, introduces essential knowledge about COVID-19 and nosocomial infection in dental settings and provides recommended management protocols for dental practitioners and students in (potentially) affected areas.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Amy Hill

<p>This paper explores one very important issue in the regulatory regime for medicines in New Zealand and around the world- the deficit of information about medicines available to doctors, patients and independent researchers. Much of the information about safety, efficacy and quality of drugs is held and controlled by pharmaceutical companies and regulators. The public is entitled to this information in full.</p>


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