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Background Oral health is an important component of general health and healthy aging, yet financial protection for the costs of oral health care is often limited. Methods We systematically compare dental care coverage in Australia (New South Wales), Canada (Alberta), England, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and the United States. Drawing on the WHO Universal Coverage Cube, we compare breadth (who is covered), depth (share of total costs covered), and scope (services covered), with a focus on adults aged 65 and older. We populated data collection templates to provide detailed and comparable descriptions of dental care coverage in 8 jurisdictions. Results Overall there were four general types of coverage models: 1) deep public coverage for a small subset of the population based on strict eligibility criteria jurisdictions: Canada, Australia and Italy; 2) universal but shallow coverage of the population, combined with deeper coverage for a sub-set of the population meeting eligibility criteria: England, France, Sweden; 3) universal, and predominantly deep coverage for the whole population: Germany; and 4) shallow coverage available to some subgroups of the population in the United States. Conclusions While age, specifically turning 65, is an important consideration in the design of public coverage in Canada, Australia and the United States, many jurisdictions do not consider age as an eligibility criterion for public coverage. Yet all jurisdictions we include, except Sweden, provide differential coverage for those who meet a specific low-income threshold. Due to the limited availability of comparable data within and across jurisdictions, further research would benefit from standardized data collection initiatives for oral health measures. Key message Given the important role oral health plays in promoting healthy aging, the limited public coverage of oral health within statutory health systems warrants policy and research attention.

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Untreated oral diseases are detrimental to overall well-being and quality of life and are in close relationship with social and economic consequences. The presence of strong evidence for caries primary and secondary prevention is a compulsory tool for the development of clinical practice guidelines (CPGs). This paper was aimed to assess systematically the importance of clinical practice guidelines in caries prevention management considering both the adult and pediatric populations and evaluate them using the Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation (AGREE II) Checklist. Records were extracted from EMBASE, SCOPUS, PubMed/Medline and seven other relevant guideline databases between 6 January and 14 February 2023. Two reviewers independently conducted the appraisal using the web-based platform My AGREE PLUS. Twenty-one guidelines/papers met the inclusion criteria and were reviewed. Eight CPGs included both primary and secondary prevention interventions, whereas thirteen presented a single preventive model. Overall, 12 guidelines were published in the USA. The mean AGREE II scores ranged from 35.4% to 84.3%. Of the total twenty-one included guidelines, twelve were classified as “Recommended”, ranging from 56.3% to 84.3%, the others were described as “Recommended with modification”, ranging from 35.4% to 68.9%. From the AGREE II analysis carried out, the CPGs included in this survey adopted a punctual methodological rigor but lacked applicative power. The present survey showed that the public, as the primary beneficiary, played a limited role in the development of the twenty-one CPGs. Hence, methodological improvement can better support high-quality CPG development in the future.