Guest Editorial.

Abstract

This Special Issue of the Australian Dental Journal coincides with an unprecedented health event in the 21st century: the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the social and economic consequences of the disease, the vivid debate about the most effective public health measures to tackle the epidemic and the global spread of the epidemic,1 people worldwide are becoming familiar with words such as ‘epidemiology’, ‘epidemic curve’, ‘fatality rate’, ‘surveillance systems’ ‘prediction’, ‘modelling’, among other. However, what is epidemiology? Epidemiology has been conceptualised as ‘the study of the occurrence and distribution of health-related events, states, and processes in specified populations, including the study of the determinants influencing such processes, and the application of this knowledge to control relevant health problems’. Two central assumptions support this definition and, therefore, Epidemiology itself: (i) the diseases, health conditions, and their determinants are not randomly distributed in a population; (ii) the knowledge of these factors has practical implications for the control and prevention of diseases and health problems.2 This Special Issue of the Australian Dental Journal is about epidemiology, more precisely about oral epidemiology, the branch of epidemiology dedicated to oral diseases and disorders its socioeconomic, behavioural and health services related factors. It describes the state of oral health and use of dental services of the Australian adult population using information from the National Study of Adult Oral Health (NSAOH) 2017–18.3 The NSAOH 2017–18 was conducted by the Australian Research Centre for Population Oral Health (ARCPOH) at the University of Adelaide in partnership with the Australian Government Department of Health and State/Territory health departments and dental services with support from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). This national study involved collection of interviews from over 15,000 adults across Australia, with clinical oral epidemiological examinations performed on over 5,000 people. NSAOH 2017–18 is only the third national oral examination survey of adults in Australia. It follows from the second National Survey of Adult Oral Health conducted in 2004–06,4 and the initial National Oral Health Survey of Australia 1987–88.5 The purpose of this Special Issue is to provide a descriptive ‘snapshot’ of oral health in the adult population of Australia and to describe their use of dental services. The findings provide up-to-date evidence that can contribute to the development of oral health policies and programs in Australia. Such evidence continues to be essential because oral diseases represent a considerable burden on the health of the public. This calls for information about the distribution of oral disease and provision of dental care among relevant subgroups of the Australian population. This report also includes some comparisons of results with the first two surveys, evaluating trends in oral disease and dental care that have occurred over the past 30 years. These trends provide insights into historical influences on dental care and likely trends in oral health status. The first set of papers deal with the methods involved in relation to sampling, data collection, weighting of the data and representativeness. Following these methods papers are a set of papers that describe oral health status for outcomes such as tooth loss, caries and periodontal disease. Other important oral conditions such as fluorosis and xerostomia are also presented. The final set of papers includes impacts of oral conditions, use of dental services and dental behaviours. Together the information in these papers reflects a valuable national resource that demonstrates the widespread nature of oral diseases in the Australian population, the impacts of these oral diseases, the groups within our society that suffer the greatest burden from oral diseases and the importance of access to dental services for Australians.