Evaluation of an oral health promotion pilot in County Durham and Darlington

Abstract

Objectives: In 2009, a primary care trust (PCT) in the north-east of England funded a pilot project for dental practices to use dental nursing staff directly from practices to promote the uptake of access to dental care as well as for promoting oral health. This targeted venues where marginalised sections of the community often access services for advice such as children's centres, nurseries and other community settings.

Design: Dental auxiliary staff, trained as oral health promoters (OHPs), provided oral health advice (OHA) at venues in deprived localities in County Durham and Darlington. Using two different questionnaires, the views and experiences of stakeholders who received the advice and those of the OHPs were evaluated.

Results: Eleven responses of the stakeholders questioned revealed that the OHA sessions were accessible, convenient, appropriate, well delivered and raised the priority of oral health within various institutions, mostly pre-school children from deprived communities. Twelve responses of the OHPs revealed they enjoyed delivering OHA and were keen to pursue the role of OHP long term.

Conclusions: The oral health promotion pilot evaluated the process of increasing awareness of oral health issues within mainly pre-school establishments, in deprived areas within a PCT. It was not clear whether the pilot improved dental access.

Keywords::

• oral health promotion
• deprived communities
• pre-school children
• access to dental care

Acknowledgements

I thank Richard Holmes for his advice and Debora Howe who provided quantitative data. I also thank all of the OHPs, the trainers who assisted with the pilot and the responses from the various recipients of the advice sessions who kindly donated their time from their busy schedules to assist with the evaluation. My thanks also to Agnes, Emma, Malcolm and Thomas Ramsdale and Chris Beavan for their support.