Abstract
Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, diabetes, cancer and diseases of the oral cavity such as caries or periodontitis represent a global and highly relevant problem due to demographic and epidemiological changes. NCDs are not only responsible for millions of deaths worldwide, but they cause relevant costs for national economies arise for the health care of societies. Assuming that oral health and general health are directly linked, emerging interactions between systemic and oral diseases are increasingly being researched. Common important risk factors have implications for economic, social, and moral determinants of health. Interdisciplinarity trained oral health professionals are needed to address the excessively high rates of inequities in oral health. The main reason that oral diseases are still a global health problem is related to mainly individual subjective high-risk approaches, which resulting in high costs and low effectiveness. A paradigm shift for a public health approach is needed at population level that integrates different health professionals who deal with NCDs. Oral care, like physical activity, is one of the most important lifestyle-related determinants of health. Widespread recognition of this kind of approach is critical to both reducing the impact of oral and non-oral NCDs. A multi-sectoral, comprehensive and integrated strategy is therefore necessary. The focus should be on social, environmental and population strategies, but should also support individual strategies.
Highlights
Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are a group of conditions related to modern lifestyle that can be explained by analyzing demographic and epidemiological transitions
Oral health has been increasingly promoted as a part of the spectrum of the NCDs since the 2011 United Nations (UN) high-level meeting on NCDs
[22] The Gross National Income (GNI) per capita, the degree of inequality in a distribution of income (Gini coefficient) and the Unemployment rate were significantly correlated to caries lesions in Italian 12-year-olds, in which important differences in caries severity were found related to different socioeconomic backgrounds [23]
Summary
Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are a group of conditions related to modern lifestyle that can be explained by analyzing demographic and epidemiological transitions. Integrated public health policies are needed in order to reduce/modify such risk factors This approach has been criticized [2, 40], since proximal risk factors alone capture only a part of the complex causative process that contributes to determine the health or disease status (lifestyles and social structure). A small number of high- and middle-income countries have undertaken regular national oral health surveys, but in most other countries very limited or no data on oral health status of their citizens are available [42] This recognizes sharing of risk factors between NCDs and oral diseases, calls for a more efficient public health joint approach [27, 31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44]. The WHO Global InfoBase stores the country data being collected as part of the STEPS approach; the data entered may derive from a range of sources such as reports published in the literature or issued by different Ministry of Health
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