SB Brasil Project: brief history and perspectives for the 2030 edition

To analyze the evolution of population-based epidemiological surveys in oral health (saúde bucal) in Brazil, and implications for the 2030 edition of the SB Brasil project, of the Ministry of Health.

This is an essay problematizing methodological and management aspects, and their implications for fieldwork, of population epidemiological surveys in oral health carried out in Brazil in different years, from 1986 to 2023.

Methodological and management decisions of the editions of the SB Brasil project, including 2023, are analyzed, focusing on the inclusion and exclusion of variables, such as dental fluorosis and the PUFA index, which registers the presence of seriously damaged teeth and which have visibly compromised pulp (P), ulcers caused by fragments of loose teeth (U), fistula (F) and abscess (A). The list of variables and the sampling plans of the nationwide oral health surveys carried out in 1986, 1996, 2003, 2010, and 2023 are problematized. The consequences of considering only clinical interest as a criterion for inclusion and exclusion of variables from epidemiological survey protocols are discussed, and the difficulties for the calibration of examiners are addressed, even when standardized methods are used.

The next editions of the SB Brasil institutional project, of the Ministry of Health, will start from a relevant accumulation of knowledge and practices resulting from the Brazilian experience with oral health epidemiology, within the scope of SUS, developed in the second half of the 20th century and the first decades of the 21st century.