Keynote Address: Are Dental Providers Ready to Offer Health Promotions to their Patients? A Look at Provider Behavior

From a public health perspective, dental providers are in a good position to provide primary and secondary prevention for oral health with sealants, fluoride varnish, caries risk assessments and oral cancer screenings and assessments. Dental providers are also well-positioned to provide health promotions for systemic health issues, such as obesity, high blood pressure, eating disorders, and tobacco and other substance abuse. While acknowledging that better reimbursement would surely increase its provision, other factors affect provider's willingness to offer health promotion interventions. Providers are concerned about their knowledge and abilities to provide screenings and interventions, and they are concerned about the potential of negative repercussions on patient relationships. We will describe the results of a child obesity intervention initiative in the dental setting in terms of provider participation, as well as outcomes of other systemic health interventions. We will discuss motivational interviewing as a health promotion tool. In conjunction with these initiatives, we will discuss the Theory of Planned Behavior and theories of information transfer as means of better understanding how to encourage dental providers to offer health promotion interventions.