Agenda item - Update on children’s oral health in Nottingham City

Agenda item

Update on children’s oral health in Nottingham City

Report of the Interim Director of Public Health and the Corporate Director for Children and Adults

Minutes:

Sandra Whiston, Consultant in Dental Public Health, Public Health England, introduced the report, highlighting the following:

 

(a)  good oral health is integral to general health and wellbeing. It is important that children are educated about this at an early age as dental decay is most common in children. Poor oral health can have wider impacts on education and the economy;

(b)  despite overall improvement significant oral health inequalities remain. Although dental decay is largely preventable, extractions under general anaesthetic remain the most common reason for hospital admission in 5-9 year olds. Nottingham has the second highest experience of dental decay in the East Midlands, after Leicester City;

(c)  since the Health and Social Care Act of 2012, local authorities have had responsibility to provide or commission oral health promotion programmes, monitor the oral health of the population by commissioning oral health surveys, and provide water fluoridation if deemed appropriate;

(d)  NHS England commissions all dental services, Health Education England develops the workforce and Public Health England provides expertise, evidence and intelligence;

(e)  Recent guidance from Public Health England has placed a bigger emphasis on prevention, and recommends that local authorities focus on oral health as a part of their health and wellbeing agendas. Oral health promotion in Nottingham was recommissioned from April 2015 to:

·  deliver a supervised tooth brushing programme within early year settings, targeting the most deprived wards in Nottingham City;

·  train key health, social care and education professionals in order for them to deliver oral health advice to citizens;

·  distribute oral health resources such as tooth brushes and toothpaste, based on evidence of need;

·  participate in national oral health awareness campaigns.

(f)  access to dental care is good in Nottingham, with 84% of practices taking on new patients which is much higher than the national average. Uptake of care is improving, particularly amongst children;

The following answers were given during the discussion which followed:

 

(g)  fluoridation of water has been identified as an effective way of reducing oral health inequality. Whilst there is no water fluoridation currently in Nottingham City, this may be considered in future but would require a detailed process identifying need and feasibility studies. This would also then need to go through a public consultation;

(h)  providing dental care through schools would be convenient, however it may still not reach all children and it would be better to engage families with dental practices when children are young or even engender the culture before they are born;

(i)  fluoridation of milk is done in some other countries but has largely been decommissioned in the UK, primarily around milk supply to children.

RESOLVED to

 

(1)  note the local authority’s responsibilities in terms of oral health and the issues highlighted regarding the oral health of children living in Nottingham including the potential wider health, educational and economic impacts;

(2)  support the revision of the oral health pages of the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment;

(3)  support the development and implementation of an Oral Health Improvement strategy for the residents of Nottingham City which will inform future commissioning strategies and collaborative working with partners;

(4)  actively support current oral health promotion activity and encourage increasing numbers of children and young people to access dental services across the city;

(5)  to discuss the feasibility of water fluoridation in Nottingham City.

 

Supporting documents: