As the national roll out of supervised toothbrushing programmes continues in areas of higher deprivation across the country, Katie Ferguson shares the lessons learned in north central London, which set up its own programme in 2024.
Following the delegation of dental commissioning to integrated care boards (ICBs) in April 2023, we saw an opportunity to redirect dental underspend into prevention, with a clear focus on reducing inequalities across north central London (which consists of five London boroughs – Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Haringey and Islington).
The Dental Transformation Programme is made up of various workstreams, featuring a variety of complementary activities and focused investments: in programmes such as increasing capacity for paediatric general anaesthetic cases, increasing capacity for additional weekend clinics, healthy lifestyle programmes such as Giving Up Loving Pop (GULP) working with the Tottenham Hotspur Foundation to support young people, developing services for hard to reach groups such as homelessness and increasing the oral health promotion offer in north central London working with nurseries.
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