How oral health educators conceptualise health promotion: a qualitative study.

Abstract

Background: Dental diseases, dental caries and periodontal disease, place a significant burden on individual and population health level. These diseases are largely preventable; health promotion initiatives have been shown to decrease the disease rates. However, there is limited implementation of health promotion in dentistry, this could be due to a number of factors, the ethos and philosophy of dentistry is focused on a curative, individualised approach to oral diseases, there is confusion around health promotion as a concept. However, dental professionals are well placed to implement health promotion, but there is a lack of understanding about the training and what dental professionals understand about health promotion.The aim was to explore conceptualization of health promotion among oral health educators and identifying the barriers and opportunities for health promotion in practiceMethods: Nominal group technique (NGT), a highly structured face-to-face meeting, was conducted with 24 oral health educators to explore how they conceptualize health promotion and the barriers and opportunities for health promotion in practice. An additional 4 questions were emailed to oral health educators after the NGT to gather additional data, 6 oral health educators were involved. The data was analyzed using thematic analysis.Results: The oral health educators in this study discussed health promotion in a holistic way, however, health education and behaviour change were mentioned more than other aspects of health promotion. Collaboration with other health professionals and getting involved in already existing health promotion programs were the identified opportunities for health promotion practice. However, the barriers of health promotion practice were identified as the curative approach that underpins dentistry and the lack of funding, time and value placed on health promotion.Conclusions: This study moves beyond a problem describing to problem solving in this space. Collaboration with other health professionals is an opportunity to be capitalised on. However, to see the biggest improvement in health promotion the curative, individualised approach to dentistry needs to be challenged.