Additional Professor Centre for Dental Education and Research, All India Institute of Medical Sciences New Delhi
Participants should be aware of the following financial/non-financial relationships: . Harsh Priya, n/a: I do not have any relevant financial / non-financial relationships with any proprietary interests.
Capacity building is one the most crucial ways to advocate for a cause. The greater the number of stakeholders, the stronger the voice of the cause; in this case, oral health promotion. This round table discussion targets the various efforts taken to put the mouth back into the body. It aligns with the World Health Assembly resolution on oral health and universal health coverage. The aim was to assess the effectiveness of oral health training program for varied non oral health stakeholders. Several one day on-site trainings of school teachers, health nurses and indigenous medicine personnel were held. During the Covid era online trainings continued. The quantitative effectiveness of the program was evaluated by validated pre and post questionnaires. Oral health education acted as a valuable tool in imparting knowledge with various implementation methods such as PowerPoint presentations, oral disease models and hands on oro-visual examination. The results showed an increase in knowledge among all the groups. The qualitative assessment was done by SWOT analysis. It helped us understand the competencies and limitations of each cohort. One-time reinforcement of oral health education can be considered as a limitation. This was overcome by forming separate WhatsApp groups for regular reinforcements and feedbacks. Improvement in oral health knowledge of various non-communicable disease flag bearers has the potential for oral health promotion of students, patients and the population at large. Such initiatives could be the torch bearers to develop future oral-health global strategies and action plans.
