Appendix C. Information about the purpose and nature of the survey
Public Health England dental public health epidemiology programme
Oral health survey of adults 2017-2018
Dental health surveys involving various population groups have been carried out across the UK since 1987. The information arising from them allows local authorities to tailor programmes for groups where oral health is poor and NHS England area teams to plan dental services to meet the needs of the population. The overall aim is to support actions to improve oral health, reduce health inequalities and improve the provision of treatment services.
This year the survey will focus on adults (aged 16+) and will access them when they attend general dental practices. The survey aims to provide information about the oral health status of adults and their use of treatment services at a local level. This will assist NHS England to arrange services to meet the needs of the population and local authorities to plan health improvement programmes where they are needed.
Local fieldwork teams from the Community Dental Service usually carry out these surveys. As with all NHS employees the teams are covered by the Data Protection Act and take confidentiality very seriously. Regional training will be provided to ensure that high standards are kept and all teams work to the same level at all stages in the survey.
Fieldwork teams will contact randomly sampled general dental practices within a local authority area. They will ask for cooperation from the practice and, where this is given, arrange a suitable time to visit the practice when a surgery is not being used. Information about the survey will be provided for the practice to pass on to patients so that they know what is being planned.
On the day(s) when the fieldwork team visit the practice they will aim to keep disruption to a minimum and ensure that appointments can run normally. One of the team members will approach adults who come to the practice and explain the nature and purpose of the survey, answer any questions the potential participants may have and ask them to take part. Volunteers will be asked to self-complete a questionnaire which takes about 10 minutes and have a brief, simple clinical examination by a dental surgeon on the epidemiology team at the practice, which also takes about 10 minutes. These activities will be fitted around treatment appointments.
The information relating to the questionnaire and dental examination is recorded anonymously; no names or dates of birth are recorded for this purpose. All data is kept securely and datasets are securely sent to regional centres for uploading via a secure web portal to the national coordinating centre. This centre collates data from all over England and produces reports on levels of dental health for England as a whole and at a variety of local government and health organisation levels. At no point will any individual practice, performer or patient be identifiable, as the data is anonymised from the examination stage and only reported or published as grouped data. Because of this, participating practices can be assured that data will not be used for performance management purposes.
At no point will the epidemiology fieldwork team make any comment to the patient volunteers about their health status or the treatment they have had. Any questions about clinical care that might arise will be referred to the responsible dentist at the practice. It is hoped that all the practices contacted will be able to assist the fieldwork teams in this national survey which local authorities have a responsibility to procure by law. The teams will keep disruption to a minimum and ensure the volunteers have a positive experience with the dental team.
As this is a pilot survey financial recognition in the form of an honorarium will be made by local Clinical Research Networks to practices who host the survey whether NHS or private.