Oral Health | Clinical and Risk Asessment | Delivering prevention to the patient

Delivering prevention to the patient
Session overview
Description
This session describes how the DH toolkit came about, what principles were applied and how it used current evidence to produce guidance on prevention. The latter are described and the evidence for this is shown.

Learning objectives
By the end of this session you will be able to:

• describe the key preventive messages listed in 'Delivering Better Oral Health – An evidence-based toolkit for prevention'
• outline the rationale for individual orientated preventive measures, within a practice population model
• describe the agents available for use for an individual
• identify and list the reviews that support the adoption of an individual based approach

Prerequisites
Before commencing this session you should:

• read 'Delivering Better Oral Health – An evidence-based toolkit for prevention'

Although caries levels in many age groups are reducing, there is thought to be potential for further improvement by maximising the effects of existing preventive messages and tools.

There is a good evidence base to support a range of preventive messages and actions for the dental clinical team to apply. Clinical teams had asked about the evidence-based actions they should be doing or saying to get the best from their preventive efforts.

In response the Department of Health asked The British Association for the Study of Community Dentistry to provide a basis for prevention in practice. This resulted in the toolkit which was sent to all practices with an NHS contract in September 2007, and an updated version to all contract holders in June 2009.