Oral Health Services Research
Oral health services research has emerged as an important theme in our research over the last decade, with findings that feed directly into the national policy agenda.
The three main research areas within this research theme are:
Clinical academics enjoy close working relationships with world class scientists (in the Institute of Health and Society and the Institute for Ageing and Health) in developing and understanding solutions to contemporary oral health problems that affect our population. We are particularly concerned to help ensure that scarce resources are used well. We now have several funded projects in the field of oral health economics and service effectiveness, particularly as these affect older populations. Recent funders including NIHR, NIDCR and MRC.
The world’s oral health continues to evolve and change, so work in dental epidemiology continues in order to keep abreast of this and feed into our wider oral health services research agenda. Newcastle continues to enjoy a leading involvement in the programme of National Surveys of Oral Health in the UK.
The interaction between oral health and nutrition is also an area of fundamental importance to population health, particularly with increasing age as the functional impacts are greatest and the links to general health most apparent. This is an important link with wider public health as it applies to old people. Recent funders include the Food Standards Agency and the MRC.
Also feeding into a wider public health agenda and linking with colleagues in public health we are developing novel techniques, using long standing expertise in mineralised tissues, to use teeth as sensitive markers of environmental pollution.
Our contribution to clinical trials underpins much of this work. Newcastle is a major contributing centre to two major HTA funded Clinical trials (FiCTIoN and IQuAD) whilst we also have a long established expertise in trials of oral hygiene and prevention and local analgesics, all of these with a view to aid clinical decision making and inform the development of an excellent service.
For more information about this theme contact: Christopher Vernazza.
