Dental Research: Dental Public Health

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What does Dental Public Health Cover?

Public Health areas are usually³

•    Health policy, program management and administration
•    Research
•    Oral health promotion and disease prevention
•    Delivery systems

One area is Epidemiology, which is the study of linking health problems to a specific cause in a human population. This is usually done in controlled case studies.

What is Epidemiology?

A specialist at this field tries to determine what or how many influences there are to certain diseases. These factors cannot be completely proven to have an exact impact on the disease itself but could be a one of several reasons.†

Two ways epidemiology is done:

•    The disease in question is already active in the community and is studied to figure out the causes.
•    The disease could happen in the future, therefore, the causes are studied through case studies so the disease could be prevented.

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References:

• ¹ Public Health Dentistry; - Dental Student Books.
• ² Epidemiological studies; - GreenFacts.
• ³ Allukian, M, DDS; - Public Dental Health Dentist.
• † Epidemiology; - Cornell University.