To synthesize English or Spanish-language literature on community health workers' (CHWs') roles, training, and impact in oral health.
A scoping review conducted in accordance with the Arksey and O'Malley (2005) methodological framework.
Electronic literature searches were conducted in Medline (Ovid), Embase (Ovid), DOSS, CINAHL, Web of Science, and Global Health CAB from inception of the databases to April 2020. Three reviewers independently conducted the title and abstract and full-text reviews. This was followed by data charting by three reviewers and data summarizing by two reviewers.
Out of the 36 articles that met the inclusion criteria, most took place in the United States (n=15) with most published between 2012 and 2019 (12). CHWs were incorporated in programs that focused on access to dental care (n=10), oral health promotion only (9), early childhood caries (8), oral health promotion and services (5), and oral cancer screening (4). Common roles included providing oral health education and behavior change motivation to community members, facilitating utilization of dental services, and the delivery of diagnostic and dental services to community members. Training and outcomes were not consistently described across studies.
CHWs have been used in oral health programs and interventions across a wide range of locations and contexts. The implementation and scaling-up of oral health CHW programs requires appropriate provision of training as well as community embedded monitoring and evaluation structures based on rigorous methods with clearly defined outcomes.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 2. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 11 October 2021.
All research outputs
#22,716,628
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Outputs from Community Dental Health
#148
of 257 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#276,522
of 463,141 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Community Dental Health
#3
of 7 outputs
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So far Altmetric has tracked 257 research outputs from this source. They receive a mean Attention Score of 4.0. This one is in the 40th percentile – i.e., 40% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 7 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has scored higher than 4 of them.
