Making sense of the Oral Health Education Project (OHEP): How can oral health education improve oral and general health

Research Location
Charles Perkins Centre/ Faculty of Dentistry/ School of Public Health
Primary Supervisors:
Prof Joerg Eberhard and Prof Adrian Bauman
Additional Supervisors
Dr Joanna Gale
Keywords
Oral health education, health promotion; randomized-controlled trial, intervention; prevention
Summary
Background:
For many low-income populations, the only dental care available is of an emergency nature, especially due to the long waiting lists in the public sector. In addition, low income populations usually have restricted access to education, which prevents their access to the information regarding the importance of a healthy oral habit. Thus, these populations not only neglect their oral health, but also swamp the public sector with burdens associated with preventable diseases that inflate the economic costs of public health. This is unfortunate because there is increasing evidence that oral and general health are intertwined. If only individuals could grasp the importance of oral health to their life, would health improve in this population?
Research question:
With this in mind, we set up a randomized clinical trial conducted between 2003 and 2007 at the Logan Hospital Oral Health Clinic, Logan, Queensland, Australia where 640 patients were randomly allocated to two oral treatment regimens: (A) standard restorative dental care with no further information and (B) restorative treatment and individualised oral health promotion with monthly provision of toothbrushes. After 3, 12 and 24 months oral health was assessed and blood was sampled to analyse surrogate markers of general health, including cholesterol, LDL, HDL, triglycerides, ESR, hsCRP, haemoglobin, platelet counts, HbA1c, electrolytes, urate, calcium, and creatinine. Diet, oral care, cigarette intake and alcohol consumption were assessed by self report (questionnaires). We asked the question: ‘can an oral health educational program improve oral and general health outcomes?’
Projects in this proposal:
We would like to
- STUDY 1: Analyse the effectiveness of the trial on dental health indicators in the maximal intervention group compared to usual care
- Analyse the effects of the trial on biomarkers and objective clinical indices of dental health
- STUDY 2: Examine factors that predictor improvements in dental health measures and biomarkers
- STUDY 3: If effective, conduct new pilot work relevant to scaling up dental health promotion interventions to the population level [translational formative research]- to conduct research into the barriers and facilitators of scaling up this intervention [or at least replicating it in other settings]
- (Possible pilot replication study if feasible)
PhD proposal:
This proposal is seeking a PhD student to undertake this work. Students would be suitable if they have data analysis background. For this proposal, dental health expertise is not essential.
Funding: To be discussed