[Oral Hygiene at the First Health Station in Peiping (1925-1938)]

The First Health Station in Peiping was officially established in 1925 with the support and promotion of John B. Grant, an American sanitarian expert teaching in Peking Union Medical College at that time. Oral public health served as one of its foundational initiatives, including dental disease screening for specific populations, diagnosis and treatment, and some oral hygiene publicity and education. This represented the first oral public health practice in the Beijing area during the Republican period, jointly carried out by the government and a public health institution. However, this practice was ineffective as a social trial. This meant the original concept of Grant failed to be fully realised. This was because of economic underdevelopment, inadequate government capacity, a shortage of professional personnel and low public awareness of oral health. This practice indicates incompatibility between the Grant model and local Chinese realities in the perspective of oral health and provides supporting evidence for a critical reassessment of his model in the Chinese context.