Re-evaluating Dental Need: A Political Economy Perspective

Dates:	25 June 2013
Times:	14:00 - 15:00
What is it:	Seminar
Organiser:	Institute of Population Health
Who is it for:	University staff

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Host: Centre for Primary Care, Institute of Population Health

Speaker: Nicholas Deal, PhD student, School of Dentistry

Abstract:'

Over recent decades dental health in the UK has been improving and the most common dental diseases continue to decline or remain stable. However, it is not clear that improvements in oral health are linked to the delivery of dental services or developments in dental science, and are more likely to be the result of improvements in dental homecare or use of fluoride. As a result the historically embedded model of providing routine dental services is drawing criticism from several angles.

While it is seldom stated explicitly, at the centre of this debate is the contention that we ought to re-evaluate what counts as oral health need in response to changes in patterns of oral disease. This is thought necessary, not simply to cut services or save money, but to redirect resources so that they are used more effectively. Drawing on empirical research this seminar outlines these problems in more detail and provides a thematic analysis of the barriers which are likely to impede the task of re-evaluating need or redistributing services. In contrast to conventional academic commentary which cites contractual impediments, resistance from the profession or deficits in the “evidence base”, the analysis presented here identifies changes in the structure of the UK’s political economy as the primary barriers preventing substantive change.

Continuing political imperatives to devolve responsibility to patients under the rubric of choice and empowerment combined with a drive to configure public services along the lines of technocratic economic models are creating conflicting objectives for the dental profession. The implications of these developments in political economy for the future of the dental profession are outlined in more detail and the seminar will close with consideration of the role of dental public health in late-modern British society.