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At the crossroads of oral health inequities and precision public health
Author(s) -
Gansky Stuart A.,
Shafik Sarah
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of public health dentistry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.64
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1752-7325
pISSN - 0022-4006
DOI - 10.1111/jphd.12316
Subject(s) - public health , health equity , social determinants of health , perspective (graphical) , environmental health , health policy , public economics , medicine , public relations , political science , computer science , economics , artificial intelligence , nursing
Objectives This paper reviews the precision public health literature pertaining to oral health, identifies possible threats that could inadvertently increase health inequities, and proposes potential opportunities that precision public health could utilize to reduce oral health inequities. Methods The health sciences literature was reviewed and supplemented with new data to identify important issues relating to precision medicine, precision oral health, precision public health, and health equity. Results Examples from general health and oral health were provided to illustrate salient concepts. Conclusions Future precision public health should utilize multifactorial, multi‐level conceptual frameworks and conceptual causal models with upstream social determinants and downstream health effects, as well as a proportionate universalism perspective; and proper analytic methods, including sufficient sample sizes, appropriate statistical competitors, health disparity indices, causal modeling, and internal and external validation.