Promoting oral health: guidelines for dental associations

Dental associations throughout the world face many new challenges. For example, many industrial countries confront the potential of excess manpower to meet current demands, while developing countries try to cope with scarce resources to control existing and increasing disease levels. This guide is intended to facilitate the development of oral promotion programmes in both situations. In industrialized countries, an oral health promotion programme should increase awareness and interest among consumers, thus facilitating the conversion of unmet need to demand. In developing countries, the oral health promotion guidelines demonstrate ways to extend resources to meet a broader base of need. In all countries, oral health promotion can demonstrate the benefit of self-care and emphasize the consumer's responsibility for personal health. Dental associations enjoy a long history of promoting oral health, yet developing a coherent programme or realizing the results of these efforts can sometimes be disappointing or frustrating. The guide is organized around a recommended sequence of activities: policy formation and dissemination; planning group; information gathering; goal setting; strategic planning; implementation; and evaluation. This document presents guidelines, not recipes. Given the range of economic, social and health needs of the Fédération Dentaire Internationale member countries, a recipe would be inappropriate. These guidelines can be tailored to the needs of your association based on the oral health needs of your population. They can be used to determine new or modified policies, to assess long- and short-term goals, to monitor progress and to educate the membership. Case studies derived from actual experiences of dental associations as they planned and analysed their efforts to promote oral health are presented. This information is included to highlight different approaches as well as problems encountered. The case studies illustrate various parts of the planning implementation and evaluation process, while the text should serve as a comprehensive review of all these components.