↓ Skip to main content

Community‐based population‐level interventions for promoting child oral health

Overview of attention for article published in Cochrane database of systematic reviews, December 2016
Altmetric Badge

About this Attention Score

  • In the top 25% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • Good Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (75th percentile)

Mentioned by

twitter
3 X users
wikipedia
1 Wikipedia page

Citations

dimensions_citation
13 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
453 Mendeley
You are seeing a free-to-access but limited selection of the activity Altmetric has collected about this research output. Click here to find out more.
Title
Community‐based population‐level interventions for promoting child oral health
Published in
Cochrane database of systematic reviews, December 2016
DOI 10.1002/14651858.cd009837.pub3
Pubmed ID
Authors

Andrea M de Silva, Shalika Hegde, Bridget Akudo Nwagbara, Hanny Calache, Mark G Gussy, Mona Nasser, Hannah R Morrice, Elisha Riggs, Pamela M Leong, Lisa K Meyenn, Reza Yousefi-Nooraie

Abstract

Dental caries and gingival and periodontal disease are commonly occurring, preventable chronic conditions. Even though much is known about how to treat oral disease, currently we do not know which community-based population-level interventions are most effective and equitable in preventing poor oral health. Primary • To determine the effectiveness of community-based population-level oral health promotion interventions in preventing dental caries and gingival and periodontal disease among children from birth to 18 years of age. Secondary • To determine the most effective types of interventions (environmental, social, community and multi-component) and guiding theoretical frameworks.• To identify interventions that reduce inequality in oral health outcomes.• To examine the influence of context in the design, delivery and outcomes of interventions. We searched the following databases from January 1996 to April 2014: MEDLINE, Embase, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), the Education Resource Information Center (ERIC), BIOSIS Previews, Web of Science, the Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects (DARE), ScienceDirect, Sociological Abstracts, Social Science Citation Index, PsycINFO, SCOPUS, ProQuest Dissertations & Theses and Conference Proceedings Citation Index - Science. Included studies were individual- and cluster-randomised controlled trials (RCTs), controlled before-and-after studies and quasi-experimental and interrupted time series. To be included, interventions had to target the primary outcomes: dental caries (measured as decayed, missing and filled deciduous teeth/surfaces, dmft/s; Decayed, Missing and Filled permanent teeth/surfaces, DMFT/S) and gingival or periodontal disease among children from birth to 18 years of age. Studies had to report on one or more of the primary outcomes at baseline and post intervention, or had to provide change scores for both intervention and control groups. Interventions were excluded if they were solely of a chemical nature (e.g. chlorhexidine, fluoride varnish), were delivered primarily in a dental clinical setting or comprised solely fluoridation. Two review authors independently performed screening, data extraction and assessment of risk of bias of included studies (a team of six review authors - four review authors and two research assistants - assessed all studies). We calculated mean differences with 95% confidence intervals for continuous data. When data permitted, we undertook meta-analysis of primary outcome measures using a fixed-effect model to summarise results across studies. We used the I(2) statistic as a measure of statistical heterogeneity. This review includes findings from 38 studies (total n = 119,789 children, including one national study of 99,071 children, which contributed 80% of total participants) on community-based oral health promotion interventions delivered in a variety of settings and incorporating a range of health promotion strategies (e.g. policy, educational activities, professional oral health care, supervised toothbrushing programmes, motivational interviewing). We categorised interventions as dietary interventions (n = 3), oral health education (OHE) alone (n = 17), OHE in combination with supervised toothbrushing with fluoridated toothpaste (n = 8) and OHE in combination with a variety of other interventions (including professional preventive oral health care, n = 10). Interventions generally were implemented for less than one year (n = 26), and only 11 studies were RCTs. We graded the evidence as having moderate to very low quality.We conducted meta-analyses examining impact on dental caries of each intervention type, although not all studies provided sufficient data to allow pooling of effects across similar interventions. Meta-analyses of the effects of OHE alone on caries may show little or no effect on DMFT (two studies, mean difference (MD) 0.12, 95% confidence interval (CI) -0.11 to 0.36, low-quality evidence), dmft (three studies, MD -0.3, 95% CI -1.11 to 0.52, low-quality evidence) and DMFS (one study, MD -0.01, 95% CI -0.24 to 0.22, very low-quality evidence). Analysis of studies testing OHE in combination with supervised toothbrushing with fluoridated toothpaste may show a beneficial effect on dmfs (three studies, MD -1.59, 95% CI -2.67 to -0.52, low-quality evidence) and dmft (two studies, MD -0.97, 95% CI -1.06 to -0.89, low-quality evidence) but may show little effect on DMFS (two studies, MD -0.02, 95% CI -0.13 to 0.10, low-quality evidence) and DMFT (three studies, MD -0.02, 95% CI -0.11 to 0.07, moderate-quality evidence). Meta-analyses of two studies of OHE in an educational setting combined with professional preventive oral care in a dental clinic setting probably show a very small effect on DMFT (-0.09 weighted mean difference (WMD), 95% CI -0.1 to -0.08, moderate-quality evidence). Data were inadequate for meta-analyses on gingival health, although positive impact was reported. This review provides evidence of low certainty suggesting that community-based oral health promotion interventions that combine oral health education with supervised toothbrushing or professional preventive oral care can reduce dental caries in children. Other interventions, such as those that aim to promote access to fluoride, improve children's diets or provide oral health education alone, show only limited impact. We found no clear indication of when is the most effective time to intervene during childhood. Cost-effectiveness, long-term sustainability and equity of impacts and adverse outcomes were not widely reported by study authors, limiting our ability to make inferences on these aspects. More rigorous measurement and reporting of study results would improve the quality of the evidence.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 3 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 453 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
United States 1 <1%
Bangladesh 1 <1%
Unknown 451 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Master 65 14%
Student > Bachelor 55 12%
Student > Ph. D. Student 43 9%
Researcher 30 7%
Student > Doctoral Student 26 6%
Other 88 19%
Unknown 146 32%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Medicine and Dentistry 160 35%
Nursing and Health Professions 55 12%
Psychology 14 3%
Social Sciences 14 3%
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 10 2%
Other 40 9%
Unknown 160 35%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 6. 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 January 2021.
All research outputs
#5,471,255
of 25,457,858 outputs
Outputs from Cochrane database of systematic reviews
#7,375
of 11,499 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#99,590
of 423,080 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Cochrane database of systematic reviews
#166
of 235 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,457,858 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 75th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 11,499 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 40.0. This one is in the 34th percentile – i.e., 34% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 423,080 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 75% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 235 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 29th percentile – i.e., 29% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.