Creating Inclusion Oral Health, across Europe, by Integrating Coproduction and Mapping Frameworks into Education

Introduction:
Rodriguez et al (2020), found that a key barrier to helping those experiencing social exclusion was the lack of awareness and knowledge, by dental professionals, regarding health and social care services available to support people experiencing exclusion. A reflexive mapping exercise (RME), displaying services and deprivation, is vital to be taught by institutions so that an understanding of the importance of, and how to access, health and social care services for people experiencing exclusion, becomes an educational competence for all dental professionals. If we are able to integrate social exclusion, intersectionality and 'othering' (Freeman et al 2020) using the RME into undergraduate dental education at an early stage, we can foster a generation who will be at the forefront of identifying, caring for and referring, those who are facing social exclusion.

Methods: The reflexive mapping project follows a methodological framework that allows the co-production of accessible services by service providers and service users. It maps the available services and relates their location to deprivation.

Results: The RME showed that there was a lack of services in areas of high social deprivation. The majority of services seek to address crisis periods with little are aimed towards early intervention/prevention and sustainable tenancy. The analysis conducted using the RME displayed how deprivation reflected the social gradient of general and oral health and the importance of students understanding the determinants of health.

Conclusion: People experiencing homelessness have and present with complex and interconnected needs beyond oral health. Creating frameworks through co-production should involve dental professionals during their training to create accessible dental services through collaboration with lived experience. Integrating the RME into education allows for exposure and understanding of how oral health is connected with wider health and social care, allowing our profession to be at the forefront of helping those marginalised by social exclusion.