A milestone for the oral health community: Canada’s first National Oral Health Research Strategy (2024–2030)

The National Oral Health Research Strategy (NOHRS)¹ was officially released at the Canadian Oral Health Summit in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on June 21, 2024.

NOHRS is a collaboration between the Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s Institute of Musculoskeletal Health and Arthritis, the Canadian Association for Dental Research, the Association of Canadian Faculties of Dentistry, the Network for Canadian Oral Health Research, the Canadian Dental Association, the Denturist Association of Canada, the Canadian Dental Therapists Association, and the Canadian Dental Hygienists Association (CDHA).

Leigha D Rock

Paul J Allison

CDHA is proud to be a collaborator in this initiative. This strategy is a first of its kind and will inform governments and decision makers, funding agencies, researchers and their organizations, health care practitioners, the public, and others to focus both on emerging, priority issues for Canadian society and on innovative methodological and technological approaches to address these issues.

Recently, there have been significant changes and developments in oral health-related policy and in data on oral health and oral health care in Canada. For the first time in 15 years, national surveys of the oral health and oral health care of people living in Canada are currently being undertaken. The 2022–2024 Canadian Health Measures Survey (CHMS) cycle 7 includes clinical, biological, and self-report indicators of oral health. In addition, Statistics Canada is conducting the Canadian Oral Health Survey (COHS), which will gather information from Canadians on their care needs, ability to pay for oral health services, challenges in accessing oral health services, and experiences with the oral health care system.² The first Survey of Oral Health Care Providers (SOHCP) is also being conducted by Statistics Canada in collaboration with Health Canada.³ And all this work is in the context of the announcement in December 2023 of the Canadian Dental Care Plan (CDCP), which will help to provide oral health care coverage for those who do not have access to dental insurance and have a net family income below $90,000.⁴ Finally, calls for proposals to the Oral Health Access Fund (OHAF) to expand access to oral health care by reducing non-financial barriers to care for targeted populations have recently been announced.⁵

Meanwhile, on the global stage, momentum for oral health and related research has continued to build with the publishing of The Lancet series on oral health in 2019^{6 , 7} and the establishment of a Lancet Commission on Oral Health in 2020.⁸ At the same time, the World Health Organization (WHO) engaged in an extensive consultative process to publish a global strategy and action plan on oral health, which highlights the need for countries to integrate oral health into primary medical care and into universal health coverage, and for countries to have an oral research strategy. NOHRS represents a major step for Canada in achieving a key action area for Strategic Objective 6 of the WHO Global Oral Health Action Plan 2023–2030.⁹

The goals of Canada’s NOHRS are to 1) galvanize the oral health and broader community to collaborate around the strategic priorities identified; and 2) leverage strengths in existing fields to foster and nurture new research areas and leaders and create the infrastructure required to address the identified priorities.

To undertake this work, we engaged in a broad and collaborative process, beginning with a meeting in Ottawa in March 2023 involving over 70 attendees from a broad range of oral research and oral health care sectors, plus representatives of patient and community groups. A report of that meeting was then widely distributed in the community, accompanied by a survey seeking feedback on the preliminary work as well as volunteers to participate in writing the strategy. Writing teams were formed in summer 2023 and a draft NOHRS was widely distributed for feedback in March 2024 prior to finalizing and publishing it in June 2024. Seventy-seven people contributed to the final document through consultations, writing, editing, and reviewing.

This process was grounded in 9 guiding principles centred on people, ideas, and science. These will continue to be central throughout the implementation of this work. Six priority areas for oral health research in Canada emerged from this comprehensive process:

• Access to care

• Inequities, identities, and oral health

• Artificial intelligence

• Omics

• Knowledge mobilization and implementation science

• Environmental sustainability

These priorities have been incorporated into a framework comprising leading issues, which are core problems requiring research to address them, emerging methods where we want to concentrate on building research capacity, skills, and infrastructure, and overarching approaches, which are both topics for research and themes applicable to all the work we will engage in related to this strategy (Figure 1).

Lastly, NOHRS includes a series of proposed goals and a timeline for the coming years. The intention is to encourage a broad range of people to engage with this high-level strategy and to create plans to implement it.

Figure 1. National oral health strategy framework

The role of the dental hygiene community in NOHRS

The oral health research community in Canada is a small but dynamic group, and NOHRS can help expand its numbers and skills, as well as its integration with other health research communities, ultimately supporting improvements in oral health and the reduction of inequities among people living in Canada.

NOHRS is of great importance to all of us as oral health practitioners. The CDCP, CHMS, COHS, SOHCP, and various federal and other sources of research funding to support oral health and oral health related questions are separate but intertwined. CDHA and the dental hygiene community at large have played pivotal roles in all these initiatives and are examples of the growing recognition of the dental hygiene profession at the national level. The dental hygiene community, as strong advocates for advancing oral health outcomes and key partners in the prevention of oral and systemic disease, represents a key arm to the successful mobilization and implementation of NOHRS research evidence. We all have a role to play in establishing oral health as “health” for all people living in Canada. These are truly exciting times!

Drive NOHRS Forward