The development and practice of social dentistry in Germany

The traditions of social dentistry in Germany represent early forms of dental public health development. It was promoted in dental care facilities where salaried dentists delivered services to target groups, i.e., schoolchildren and sickness fund members. They enabled larger numbers of patients to receive dental care, especially those of lower class origin who otherwise would have remained untreated because of lack of financial resources or scarcity of manpower. School dental clinics not only delivered dental treatment, but also distributed oral hygiene and nutritional information to school-aged children. Social dentistry in the prefluoride era in Germany pursued an egalitarian and social-class oriented concept of dental care delivery, aiming at compensating the detrimental effects that the private practice-based, fee-for-service financed dental care system had produced in the lower classes of the population. The impact of the Nazi regime nearly abolished the institutions of social dentistry. They never were restored in West Germany after World War II. In East Germany dental care had been organized according to traditions of social dentistry, i.e., delivering services in dental treatment centers. Since the unification of the two German states, the institutions of dental care delivery in former East Germany have been restructured to fit the private practice-based model of former West Germany, eliminating most of the social dentistry institutions in the country.