Principles for planning the teaching of dental public health in an MPH course

Dental public health should be presented to MPH students as an integral component in the general promotion of health. Students should be presented with the "dental" component in public health and the "public health" component in dentistry. Dental examples should be utilized to illustrate most of the other disciplines taught in the MPH course. The underlying principals that determine the teaching of dental public health within an MPH course include: the associations between oral and general health; oral health as an integral component in quality of life; basic concepts in the understanding of oral health and disease; the prevalence of oral diseases; oral diseases as a specific characteristic of industrialized-urbanized-developed societies; the methods of measuring dental health in epidemiological surveys; the patterns of changing dental epidemiology around the world; the social component of dental disease; the promotion of oral health as an important, typical, example of successful public health efforts; socio-economic-political aspects of oral health promotion; dental health care delivery systems in different regions; members of the expanded oral health team and the potential of including the general health team; oral health promotion for the geriatric population; specific examples of planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of community oral health programs.