Mission
The Community Oral Health Group studies factors associated with oral health and oral health inequalities, to developing and testing interventions and strategies for addressing these health inequalities.
Themes
Our group of dental public health clinicians, researchers, behavioural scientists, epidemiologists and statisticians has extensive experience in oral health epidemiology and health improvement evaluation. Over the past 5 years we have developed a key interest in understanding and tackling oral health inequalities in child oral health, head and neck cancer, and adult oral health. For further information please refer to individual researchers.
Funding
Funding from the Scottish Government, Chief Scientist Office, NHS Education for Scotland, National Records Scotland, and the World Health Organisation International Agency for Research in Cancer has allowed us to investigate factors associated with oral health inequalities, and enabled us to contribute to the development and lead the evaluation of interventions aimed at addressing such health inequalities.
Translational & Impact
Both the Community Oral Health and Infection & Immunity research groups have strong links with the Scottish Government Health Directorate. Many of our research activities relate to political priorities such as the early years, and oral health inequalities. For example, research into Childsmile – the national oral health improvement programme for Scotland had had significant impact on improving child oral health and addressing oral health inequalities. Currently, in collaboration with the Infection and Immunity Group, our team is actively engaged in clinical studies involving priority groups, including young children through to the elderly. This combination of microbiological, immunological, public health and epidemiological expertise to study oral infectious diseases in these populations, with scope for enhancing prevention, permits powerful translation into practice and significant impact.