The Instituto de Saúde Pública da Universidade do Porto (ISPUP) is one of the participating institutions in the European project DELIVER (DELiberative ImproVEment of oRal care quality), which aims to implement a model to help improve the quality and safety of access to oral health care for all European citizens.
Oral diseases and conditions, such as dental caries, periodontal disease, tooth loss, oral cancer, among others, affect over 3.5 billion people worldwide and are the third most expensive types of diseases to treat in the European Union.
According to the 2021 WHO Oral Health Resolution, oral care has been largely neglected for many years. A considerable number of European Union citizens do not have access to safe, quality oral care, and many face financial hardships in accessing oral treatment.
For oral health to become a top priority in the agenda of policy-makers, an integrated approach that promotes the synergy between several European partners is needed. This is precisely what the DELIVER project aims to achieve.
As Paulo Melo, ISPUP researcher participating in the project, lecturer at the Faculdade de Medicina Dentária da Universidade do Porto (FMDUP) and member of the “Life Course Perspective on Oral Health” laboratory, part of the associated Laboratory for Integrative and Translational Research in Population Health (ITR), explains, “DELIVER aims to improve access to oral care, through the identification and implementation of quality indicators and dialogue between multiple stakeholders from different sectors of society.”
“The project will bring together researchers, civil society, patient organizations, health professionals, policymakers, and the industry, so that, through dialogue and knowledge exchange, the problems that hinder universal access to quality oral health can be solved”, says the head of the project in Portugal.
Scheduled to start in the second half of this year and with a scheduled duration of48 months, DELIVER features 10 European institutions, including ISPUP.
To achieve an improvement in oral health care access, reliable and user-friendly information is needed. However, one of the main challenges to overcome in this area is the lack of data and quality indicators to monitor oral health care provision.
ISPUP will play an active role in the consensual approval of quality indicators for oral health care, in the first phase of the project. These indicators will be the foundation that will allow for the monitoring, evaluation and improvement of access, quality, and safety of oral care provision in dental clinics at an international, national, and community level.
The Institute will also be responsible for developing a monitoring system for these indicators at a European level and for characterizing the oral health care situation in the countries participating in the Consortium. This situational analysis will enable the outline of key points of intervention, in order to achieve an improvement in access and in the care provided.
For the achievement of these goals, Paulo Melo will also have Maria de Lurdes Pereira and Álvaro Azevedo in his team, both ISPUP researchers, lecturers in FMDUP, and members of the laboratory “Life Course Perspective on Oral Health” of the associate laboratory ITR.
In addition to ISPUP, the following institutions are also participating in the project: Radboud University Medical Centre (Netherlands), Stichting Vrije Universiteit (Netherlands), Stichting MLC Foundation (Netherlands), Universitätsklinikum Heidelberg (Germany), aQua gmbH (Germany), Universidade de Manchester (United Kingdom), Karolinska Institutet (Sweden), Universidade de Malta (Malta) and Universidade de Copenhaga (Denmark).
The project is coordinated by the Radboud University Medical Centre in the person of Stefan Listl.
The DELIVER (DELiberative ImproVEment of oRal care quality) is funded by the European Commission in the Health Cluster under the Horizon Europe programme.
Image: Daniel Frank/Unsplash
