What informs oral health and chronic disease policy development in Australia: a citation analysis

Improvement of health services and patient outcomes depends on the translation of health research into health policy. Oral health research can inform policies to manage chronic diseases and improve quality of life of affected individuals. To determine if translation of this research into policy is occurring, we identify where policymakers obtain evidence to inform the development of Australian health policy. We conducted a citation analysis of oral health, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cognitive impairment National policies to determine if current oral health research has informed oral health and chronic disease policy. We analysed five National policies with 268 individual references to policy or organizational documents (n = 179), peer-reviewed research (n = 74), grey literature (n = 12), or unidentifiable (n = 3). Although we found oral health references listed in the National policies (92), we did not find this information to have been translated into the oral health and chronic disease policies we analysed.