A common risk approach for oral health promotion and prevention.

In India, majority of the resources are channelized toward providing curative services. Preventive services are mainly restricted to health education and diagnostic check up. Dental professionals are trying to alter the behaviors that were found to be the cause of the disease. But one of the major criticisms of such measures is that the approach is narrow and isolated, separating the mouth from the rest of the body. The outcome of this approach is mere duplication of the services and confl icting and contradictory messages to the public. Oral health is an important component of general health.[1] It has also become clear that the causative or risk factors in oral disease are often the same as those implicated in the major general diseases.[2] Thus, oral health promotion and oral disease prevention should embrace what is termed “the common risk factor approach”, leading to the integration of oral health promotion into broader health promotion. This approach assumes that the chronic, noncommunicable diseases, such as obesity, heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, mental illness, and dental disease, share a common risk.[3] Poor hygiene, tobacco use, stress, trauma, sedentary lifestyle are factors linked to the development of several chronic conditions including oral diseases [Figure 1].