Category Page: Oral HP Surveillance

The definition of surveillance in public health is “the ongoing and systematic collection, analysis and interpretation of outcome-specific data for use in planning, implementing, and evaluating public health practice”.

Monitoring is a close watch on disease rates over time, and on the effects of interventions. It leads to the evaluation of an intervention, and can be used to change course if the expected results are not being achieved during the intervention.

Screening is a specific assessment to detect a disease, suspicion of a disease, or risk of developing a disease, and to determine a course of action – for example, screening school children to detect the need for a referral for treatment, or to select which children would benefit from a specific preventive procedure such as the application of topical fluoride or dental sealants.

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Surveillance, monitoring and screening are critical elements of successful oral health promotion and disease prevention programs. Dental surveys can be clinical surveys, self report surveys or a combination of the two. There is often overlap between screening, surveys and monitoring. For example a screening program can be used to detect dental caries and make a referral for treatment, while at the same time it gathers data (surveillance) and show trends in oral health status (monitoring).

Resources

Development and Implementation of an Oral Health Survey
Health Surveillance in Europe – 2008

Best practice in conducting surveys, screening or monitoring

In order to be a Best Practice, surveys should be:

  • Comparable – Surveys can be compared with those of other regions provided they are looking at the same indices, measured in the same way and done on similar age groups. The World Health Organization sets standard age groups and methodologies for oral health surveys1, 2, so that they can be compared within a country or internationally. In Canada the gold standard for oral health surveys is the Oral Health Component of the Canadian Health Measures Survey (CHMS), and for any surveys that are done in Canada the results should be able to be compared with it.3 The CHMS uses the same indicators as the WHO methodology, so results of the CHMS survey can also be compared internationally.
  • Valid
    • Questions in self-report surveys should be those that have been tested for validity.4
    • Clinical surveys, in order to be valid, need to take into consideration the survey size, randomization and elimination of bias.5
  • Operator calibration – prior to conducting a survey, all operators should be thoroughly calibrated, so that each is looking at the same things in the same way.1

References

  1. Oral health surveys: basic methods; 4th ed. Geneva: World Health Organisation; 1997.
  2. Comparing Oral Health Care Systems; A second international collaborative study. World Health Organization.
  3. Summary Report on the Findings of the Oral Health Component of the Canadian Health Measures Survey. Health Canada.
  4. Validity and reliability of a questionnaire for measuring child oral-health-related quality of life. Jokovic A, Locker D, Stephens M, Kenny D, Tompson B, Guyatt G. J Dent Res. 2002 Jul;81(7):459-63.
  5. Technical Report on the Findings of the Oral Health Component of the Canadian Health Measures Survey

Subtopics

  1. Strategic Planning for Oral Health
  2. Dental Surveillance, Monitoring and Screening
  3. Oral Health Promotion and Integration of Services
  4. Oral Health Promotion for Vulnerable Populations
  5. Oral Health Promotion for Infants & Preschool Children
  6. Oral Health Promotion for Children and Youth

Posts Within Category: Currently displaying best practices 1 to 2 of approximately 2 found within the category.