Background: A working knowledge of data analytics is becoming increasingly important in the digital health era. Interactive dashboards are a useful, accessible format for presenting and disseminating health-related information to a wide audience. However, many oral health researchers receive minimal data visualisation and programming skills. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate the development of an analytical, interactive dashboard, using oral health-related data from multiple national cohort surveys. Methods: The flexdashboard package was used within the R Studio framework to create the structure-elements of the dashboard and interactivity was added with the Shiny package. Data sources derived from the national longitudinal study of children in Ireland and the national children’s food survey. Variables for input were selected based on their known associations with oral health. The data were aggregated using tidyverse packages such as dplyr and summarised using ggplot2 and kableExtra with specific functions created to generate bar-plots and tables. Results: The dashboard layout is structured by the YAML (YAML Ain’t Markup Language) metadata in the R Markdown document and the syntax from Flexdashboard. Survey type, wave of survey and variable selector were set as filter options. Shiny’s render functions were used to change input to automatically render code and update output. The deployed dashboard is openly accessible at https://dduh.shinyapps.io/dduh/. Examples of how to interact with the dashboard for selected oral health variables are illustrated. Conclusions: Visualisation of national child cohort data in an interactive dashboard allows viewers to dynamically explore oral health data without requiring multiple plots and tables and sharing of extensive documentation. Dashboard development requires minimal non-standard R coding and can be quickly created with open-source software.

Introduction A working knowledge of data analytics is becoming increasingly important in the digital health era. Interactive dashboards are a useful, accessible format for presenting and disseminating health-related information to a wide audience. However, many oral health researchers receive minimal data visualisation and programming skills. Objectives The objective of this protocols paper is to demonstrate the development of an analytical, interactive dashboard, using oral health-related data from multiple national cohort surveys. Methods The package was used within the R Studio framework to create the structure-elements of the dashboard and interactivity was added with the package. Data sources derived from the national longitudinal study of children in Ireland and the national children’s food survey. Variables for input were selected based on their known associations with oral health. The data were aggregated using tidyverse packages such as and summarised using and with specific functions created to generate bar-plots and tables. Results The dashboard layout is structured by the YAML (YAML Ain’t Markup Language) metadata in the R Markdown document and the syntax from Flexdashboard. Survey type, wave of survey and variable selector were set as filter options. Shiny’s render functions were used to change input to automatically render code and update output. The deployed dashboard is openly accessible at https://dduh.shinyapps.io/dduh/. Examples of how to interact with the dashboard for selected oral health variables are illustrated. Conclusion Visualisation of national child cohort data in an interactive dashboard allows viewers to dynamically explore oral health data without requiring multiple plots and tables and sharing of extensive documentation. Dashboard development requires minimal non-standard R coding and can be quickly created with open-source software.

BackgroundDental caries is the most common childhood disease worldwide. In the mid‐1960s, mandatory Community Water Fluoridation (CWF) was introduced in the Republic of Ireland (RoI) aimed at reducing the prevalence and severity of dental caries in the population. In 2017, approximately, 71% of the Irish population was supplied with fluoridated drinking water.ObjectivesTo review all children's dental health surveys at National, Regional and County‐levels conducted in the Republic of Ireland from 1950 to 2021 and describe trends in dental caries prevalence. The secondary objective was to compare dental caries experience in children living in areas with and without CWF.MethodsSeven databases (Embase, Medline Ovid, PubMed, Cochrane, Web of Science, Scopus and Lenus Ireland) were systematically searched followed by lateral searches from reference lists. Studies reporting the caries experience of Irish children were eligible for inclusion. Two authors independently evaluated the quality of included studies using the Joanna Briggs Institute Critical Appraisal Checklist.ResultsThirty‐one studies were included. Over the last 70 years, at National, Regional and County levels, mean dmft/DMFT (decayed, missing and filled teeth) scores have decreased and the percentage of caries‐free children has increased in 5, 8, 12, and 15‐year‐olds. The decline in dental caries indices observed throughout the country was greater in children living in areas with CWF. Between the 1960s and 2002, the mean dmft scores for 5‐year‐olds living in the RoI were reduced by approximately 82% and 69% for the fluoridated and non‐fluoridated groups respectively. Reduction in the mean DMFT scores for the 12‐year‐olds were 75% and 71%, respectively, for the fluoridated and non‐fluoridated groups. Between 1961 and 2014, reductions in the mean dmft/DMFT scores among 5 and 12‐years‐olds living in County Dublin were approximately 88% and 90% respectively. These results should be interpreted in the context of widespread use of fluoridated toothpaste in the RoI.ConclusionsLarge reductions in the prevalence of dental caries in Irish children have been observed over the last seven decades. Greater dental caries reductions have been reported among children living in areas with CWF compared to those without CWF.