Designing an Oral Health Surveillance System in Iran

Objectives: The concept of oral health surveillance is derived from disease surveillance, and means “to watch over oral health status”, in order to make decisions that lead to improvements in oral health status in populations. The aim of this study was to design an oral health surveillance system for country to aid long-term planning in oral health system and its development, to provide input for program management and evaluation, and to give timely warning of the need for intervention to prevent critical deteriorations in oral health condition. Timely warning requires earlier indicators of the possibility of oral health access, and risk factor indicators are often the most appropriate.

Methods: In this study, the basic steps that are involved in designing and building an oral health surveillance system were described. Both qualitative and quantitative seven steps approaches were used to design an oral health surveillance system.

Results: After stakeholders' analysis and selecting oral health stakeholders at country level, the most important, feasible and fundable Oral Health Surveillance Indicators (n=32) were selected, divided and prioritized into five areas and agreed by well-established structured, multistep facilitated group techniques. Through a situation analysis and comparative study two data sources were identified. The proposed system confirmed as part of identified Delphi process consisted of three round of electronic surveys.

Conclusions: This was the first consensus study of Iranian oral health experts to identify key areas for improving oral healthcare programs and interventions. By this study, necessary steps to design an effective system for oral health surveillance system have been highlighted. The designed system is composed of understanding the current surveillance system of non-communicable diseases, analyzing effective strategic factors of oral health care system, determining oral health priorities and measurable indicators of surveillance system, and patient management profile and hold records.