The Principles Prevention in Dentistry

1.1 What is health promotion? Health promotion is the science and art of helping people and society change their lifestyles to achieve optimal health. It places an emphasis on improving quantity and quality of life for all and enables the improvement of health. Therefore, health promotion includes the use of any preventive, educational, administrative policy, program, or law to achieve this outcome. (1, 2, 3) Health promotion practice and policy is currently undergoing a process of fundamental change. The focus of many health education interventions has been on defined diseases, targeted at changing the behaviors of high-risk individuals. Health professionals have dominated this approach in terms of programme development, implementation, and evaluations. This health education model has been very popular with the dental profession as it fits the clinical approach to care and treatment of individual patients. Recent effectiveness reviews of the oral health education and promotion literature have however, recognized the limitations of many educational interventions to produce sustained improvements in oral healths. Another one of the common finding of the reviews was the lack of theory underpinning many interventions (4-8).