Developing a community engagement space: tackling inequality through oral health education

TY - JOUR

T1 - Developing a community engagement space

T2 - tackling inequality through oral health education

AU - Durrant, Sophie

AU - Periasamy, Priyanka Ganesan

AU - Seeballuck, Clement

N1 - Copyright: © 2025, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to the British Dental Association.

PY - 2025/11/28

Y1 - 2025/11/28

N2 - Dundee Dental Connect is a co-creative initiative amongst students and staff within Dundee Dental School and Hospital. Our aim is to reduce the health inequality gap around Dundee and beyond. We hope to tackle these inequalities by providing free oral health education and supplies to disadvantaged groups. It has becoming apparent that this is an important issue to address as 37% of Dundee's population is living in areas that are within Scotland's 20% most deprived. This percentage includes 10,171 children (0–15 years).1 This has been our aim since our founding in 2023 and from continued voluntary efforts and support from donors, we have been able to reach individuals from a variety of different backgrounds.2 From the start, we have always visited primary schools but as we have evolved, we extended our visits to food banks, community centres and ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) classes. With this expansion, we have invested in new resources to aid our preventative teaching and interventions with the aim of strengthening public engagement.

AB - Dundee Dental Connect is a co-creative initiative amongst students and staff within Dundee Dental School and Hospital. Our aim is to reduce the health inequality gap around Dundee and beyond. We hope to tackle these inequalities by providing free oral health education and supplies to disadvantaged groups. It has becoming apparent that this is an important issue to address as 37% of Dundee's population is living in areas that are within Scotland's 20% most deprived. This percentage includes 10,171 children (0–15 years).1 This has been our aim since our founding in 2023 and from continued voluntary efforts and support from donors, we have been able to reach individuals from a variety of different backgrounds.2 From the start, we have always visited primary schools but as we have evolved, we extended our visits to food banks, community centres and ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) classes. With this expansion, we have invested in new resources to aid our preventative teaching and interventions with the aim of strengthening public engagement.

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105023335026

U2 - 10.1038/s41415-025-9401-0

DO - 10.1038/s41415-025-9401-0

M3 - Comment/debate

C2 - 41315691

AN - SCOPUS:105023335026

SN - 0007-0610

VL - 239

SP - 676

EP - 677

JO - British Dental Journal

JF - British Dental Journal

IS - 10

ER -