Guidance
This guideline covers improving oral health by developing and implementing a strategy that meets the needs of people in the local community. It aims to promote and protect people’s oral health by improving their diet and oral hygiene, and by encouraging them to visit the dentist regularly.
NICE has also produced guidelines on promoting oral health in general dental practice and oral health for adults in care homes.
Recommendations
This guideline includes recommendations on:
- prioritising, assessing and promoting oral health
- giving information and advice on oral health
- commissioning training and oral health promotion services
- oral health interventions in early years services
- oral health interventions in primary schools
Who is it for?
- Health and wellbeing boards, commissioners and directors of public health
- Consultants in dental public health
- Frontline practitioners working more generally in health, social care and education
- Members of the public
Is this guideline up to date?
June 2018: We have found no new evidence that affects the recommendations. For more information, see the surveillance decision.
Guideline development process
How we develop NICE guidelines
This guideline was previously called oral health: approaches for local authorities and their partners to improve the oral health of their communities.
Your responsibility
The recommendations in this guideline represent the view of NICE, arrived at after careful consideration of the evidence available. When exercising their judgement, professionals and practitioners are expected to take this guideline fully into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences and values of their patients or the people using their service. It is not mandatory to apply the recommendations, and the guideline does not override the responsibility to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual, in consultation with them and their families and carers or guardian.
All problems (adverse events) related to a medicine or medical device used for treatment or in a procedure should be reported to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency using the Yellow Card Scheme.
Local commissioners and providers of healthcare have a responsibility to enable the guideline to be applied when individual professionals and people using services wish to use it. They should do so in the context of local and national priorities for funding and developing services, and in light of their duties to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity and to reduce health inequalities. Nothing in this guideline should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with complying with those duties.
Commissioners and providers have a responsibility to promote an environmentally sustainable health and care system and should assess and reduce the environmental impact of implementing NICE recommendations wherever possible.