First Dental Steps Intervention - Feasibility Study
Research type
Research Study
Full title
First Dental Steps Intervention: a feasibility study of a Health Visitor led infant oral health improvement programme
IRAS ID
292280
Contact name
Jo Williams
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Bristol
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
Not applicable, Not applicable
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 31 days
Research summary
Research Summary\n\nChildhood tooth decay is a burden for children and their families. It is one of the main reasons for children requiring a general anaesthetic. Public Health England have recommended programmes to improve oral health. These include training staff working with children, giving oral health advice during home visits and giving fluoride toothpaste at the right time. First Dental Steps (FDS) is a new programme which includes all three of these recommendations.\n\nThis research study aims to find out what parents and Health Visitor Teams think about First Dental Steps. First Dental Steps will be given to vulnerable children at their one-year development check across five Local Authorities in South West England. Health Visitor Teams will give age appropriate oral health advice, a child toothbrushing pack and child drinking cup. Where possible information on how to access dental services will be given. \n\nWe are also testing whether we can collect information about any changes made. We will ask families questions about toothbrushing and diet at two time points over six months. The questions will first be asked when the Health Visitor Teams deliver their usual home visit and give the pack. The entire study will run for 9 months from March 2021 to November 2021. We will do interviews with health visiting staff, public health staff and parents to help us explore if parents and health visitor teams find it ok. \n\nResults from this study will give information about whether we can give First Dental Steps, what staff, parents and funders think about it and whether we can collect information from parents. This will help us to decide whether to do a bigger study in the future to test if it improves children’s dental health.\n\nSummary of Results\n\nChildhood tooth decay is a burden for children and their families. It is one of the main reasons for children requiring a general anaesthetic. National guidelines recommend programmes to improve oral health. These include training staff working with children, giving oral health advice during home visits and giving fluoride toothpaste at the right time. First Dental Steps (FDS) is a new programme which included all three of these recommendations. Where Health Visitors gave families some advice about looking after their child’s teeth and a toothbrushing gift pack, which included a toothbrush, toothpaste, and a free flow cup, at their one-year check. This research study aimed to find out what parents and health visitors thought about this. We were also testing whether we could collect information about any changes that families made, by asking questions about toothbrushing and drinking from a baby bottle, at two time points five months apart.\n\nAlthough, we didn’t have a lot of families take part in our study all of them said they really liked the intervention. Their only concern was the cup being messy as it can spill. All of the professionals working in the area also thought First Dental Steps was suitable and helpful for families. They thought it was possible to add this into their normal work but there were some worries about the time as they have a lot of different things to talk to families about during this visit.\n\nWe did see an increase in the number of families brushing their child’s teeth and fewer using baby bottles, but this was based on a small number of families and we cannot know if this was because of FDS or because the children grew older and maybe had more teeth come through.\n\nDespite this, FDS seems to be a useful addition to the one-year health visit and the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) is going to look at offering this in all local authorities in South West England.
REC name
North of Scotland Research Ethics Committee 2
REC reference
21/NS/0026
Date of REC Opinion
22 Feb 2021
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion