Newsletter
NEW DELHI, India: The FDI has just opened its ‘data hub for global oral health’, an evolving online database of oral health statistics and indicators. It has started out with a limited amount of information but it is anticipated that the content will expand and deepen in the coming months. The ‘hub’ has been developed under the guidance of the FDI Oral Health Atlas Task Team, and aims ultimately to provide a one-stop shop for all information pertaining directly or indirectly to global oral health.
Evidence-based decision-making is a key issue in the international health care community: it promotes good science, encourages transparency and professional accountability, and helps focus efforts and monitor progress. Data bring efficiency and effectiveness to the strategic decision-making process.
In the field of healthcare, data are especially important, where reliable information is crucial for the effective allocation of scarce resources. This is why it is vital to remedy the dearth of data in the field of oral health/disease and oral care. FDI’s Oral Health Atlas has proved to be a landmark achievement since it was published in 2009; nevertheless, with data dating back, in some cases, to the 1990s, and only a limited number of indicators available, its information is now in need of an update.
From the perspective of health policy, the lack of oral health data has hampered the World Health Organization’s (WHO) efforts to develop, for oral health, a comprehensive global monitoring framework including a set of indicators to monitor trends and to assess progress in the implementation of health care strategies and plans.
FDI and its partners worked hard to ensure that the 2011 UN Political Declaration on the Prevention and Control of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs), from which WHO’s action plans derive, recognises that oral diseases pose a major health burden for many countries, share common risk factors with the main NCDs, and can greatly benefit from common responses to NCDs. The challenge is to quantify that burden so that, as of now, year on year progress can be made and measured.
Thus, it is anticipated that the ‘data hub for global oral health’ created by FDI, the leading international organisation in the field of oral health care, and available to its member national dental associations and a wider public, will also help to provide a sound basis for a future global oral health monitoring framework.
As for content, the ‘data hub’ will cast the net much wider for information. For example, the crucial role of social determinants in oral health will make socio-economic data a key component. So will the data on incidence of NCDs such as diabetes where a close relationship with oral disease has been clearly established.
