Caries and periodontal disease in Indigenous adults in Australia: a case of limited and non-contemporary data.

Conclusions This review highlights a lack of robust and contemporary data to inform the development of policies and programs to address the disparities in oral health in Indigenous populations living in many parts of Australia.What is known about the topic? Many studies report that Indigenous people in Australia have poorer general health compared with non-Indigenous people.What does this paper add? This paper documents the available caries and periodontal disease prevalence and experience for Indigenous adults in Australia published in peer-reviewed journals. It demonstrates significant limitations in the data, including no data in several large Australian jurisdictions, inconsistency with reporting methods and most data available being for Indigenous adults living in rural locations. Therefore, the oral health data available in the peer-reviewed literature do not reflect the situation of all Indigenous people living in Australia.What are the implications for practitioners? It is important for oral health practitioners to have access to current and relevant statistics on the oral health of Indigenous Australians. However, we have highlighted significant evidence gaps for this population group within the peer-reviewed literature and identified the limitations of the available data upon which decisions are currently being made. This paper also identifies ways to capture and report oral health data in the future to enable more meaningful comparisons and relevance for use in pol...
Source: Australian Health Review - Category: Hospital Management Authors: Tags: Aust Health Rev Source Type: research