Acknowledgements and Statements of Funding The work was funded through an open competition grant from Public Health Agency (PHA). The work was managed through the PHA, but part of the funding came from Cancer Focus NI. Queen's University Belfast evaluated Dead Cool independently from Cancer Focus NI, who played no part in identifying the main outcome measures, data collection or data analysis. We would especially like to thank the young people and school personnel who participated in the study, without their time and commitment this research would not have been possible.

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Background Oral health is a critical issue for public health and poor oral health is associated with significant chronic health conditions and lower quality of life. There has been little focus on providing oral health care to people who receive care in their own homes, despite the high risk of poor oral health in older people. Nurses practicing in the community are well placed to deliver this care, but little is known about how to build this capability through education or training interventions. Methods A scoping review methodology was employed to find and review studies of oral health interventions involving populations of people receiving care in their own home or those nurses who deliver this care. The research question asked what previous research tells us about oral health interventions delivered by nurses in the community. Data was extracted for four areas: setting and type of intervention, patient outcomes, changes to nursing practice and implementation and process evaluations of interventions. Results Two thousand eighty papers were found from the searches, and only nine were ultimately deemed eligible for inclusion in the review. Included studies spanned community nursing for older people (n = 3) and health visiting or community nursing for children and infants (n = 6). Patient outcomes were generally positive, but this is based on a low level of evidence. Changes to practice including increased oral health care administered by nurses were found, but this required professional support to be sustainable. Conclusions This review has found that there is a clear gap in the research around interventions designed to be used by community nurses to improve oral health care for people receiving care in their own homes. The results also suggest that any future intervention must make use of a participatory, co-design approach and consider the complex setting of nursing practice in the community and the barriers to delivering this care, such as time pressure and lack of prior experience.

Introduction Although it is possible to live well with dementia and many individuals with dementia lead active lives with the help of family, friends, and communities, the general impression of dementia is frequently negative. Dementia is a global health issue. Despite this, little research has been done on the effects of innovative dementia education strategies among undergraduate nursing students. The aim of this study was therefore to assess if this serious digital game, originally intended for the public, could increase knowledge about dementia in first-year nursing students. Methods The intervention was a digital serious game called “The Dementia Game”, which was available to students throughout February 2021, to a convenience sample of first-year undergraduate nursing students (n = 560) completing a BSc Honours Nursing Degree programme in one university in Northern Ireland. The game was evaluated using a pretest-posttest design. The questionnaire comprised of a 30- item true- false Alzheimer’s Disease Knowledge Scale (ADKS), which covers risk factors, assessment and diagnosis, symptoms, course, life impact, caregiving and treatment and management. Data were analysed using paired t-tests and descriptive statistics. Results Overall dementia knowledge increased significantly after playing the game. Pre-test to post-test increases were observed across a range of seven categories of dementia knowledge (life impact, risk factors, symptoms, treatment, assessment, caregiving and trajectory), with particularly large increases in knowledge of trajectory and risk factors, as shown using paired t-tests. All pre-test to post-test comparisons were significant at the p < 0.001 level. Conclusions A short serious digital game on dementia improved first-year student’s knowledge about dementia. Undergraduate students also expressed that this approach to dementia education was effective in improving their knowledge about the disease.

BackgroundEffective reading comprehension teaching is an aspiration of education systems across the world. Teaching incorporating reciprocal reading theory and evidence is an internationally popular approach for improving comprehension.AimsThis paper uses two large cluster randomized controlled trials of similar reciprocal reading interventions implemented in different ways to compare their effectiveness.SampleThe two interventions had the same teacher professional development, reciprocal reading activities and dosage/exposure, but varied in their implementation, with one delivered as a whole‐class (‘universal’) version for pupils aged 8–9 years and the other a small group (‘targeted’) version for pupils aged 9–11 years with specific comprehension difficulties.MethodsTwo large‐scale cluster RCTs were conducted in 98 schools with N = 3699 pupils in the universal trial and N = 1523 in the targeted trial.ResultsMulti‐level models showed significant effects for the targeted version of the intervention on pupil reading comprehension (g = .18) and overall reading (g = .14). No significant effects were found for the whole class version. A sub‐group analyses of disadvantaged pupils showed the targeted intervention's effects were even larger on reading comprehension (g = .25).ConclusionsThe evidence suggested that this reciprocal reading intervention worked best when implemented in small groups and targeted for pupils with specific comprehension difficulties and particularly for pupils in disadvantaged circumstances.CommentsThis evaluation shows that even if a reading comprehension intervention is underpinned by strong theory and evidence‐based practice, its effectiveness can still depend on implementation choices.