Application of Policy Analysis Models in Oral Health Issues: A Review

Oral health is a complex interaction that contains factors such as disease status and physiological and psychosocial properties. Because of complexity of the health system, policymakers should find some ways to simplify the relations to increase the chance of understanding the conditions, values, and ideas behind it. Policy learning could be built on the appropriate policy models application corn stone. The aim of this study was to answer this question that what policy models were applied in oral health policy studies and what oral health policy issues were analyzed by policy models.

A systematic review was conducted across international electronic databases (PubMed, ISI Web of Knowledge, and Scopus) with no time limitation and using prearranged keywords. All publications such as articles and thesis were included. Searched terms were selected based on frequent health policy model components and an initial search. Search strategy based on each data base instruction was applied.

Eight models or frameworks were applied in total. Most of these models were focused on process stage of oral health policy making. Five main themes such as the role of stakeholders in oral health policy making, assessment of oral health system, oral health policy development, the process of oral health policy making, and oral health policy learning and capacity building were synthesized.

Oral health policy issues could be analyzed more comprehensively, and researchers could be guided by applying policy models and frameworks to answer policy-learning questions. Application of models and frameworks should be based on the nature of problem and issue, and the level of problem screening is a critical point in applying appropriate model.