Community Dental Health

cover art

Cover Date:
September 2013
Print ISSN:
0265 539X
Vol:
30
Issue:
3

The origins of BASCD and the Specialty of Dental Public Health: Some personal memories

doi:10.1922/CDH_3262Dowell02

The editorial in the March issue of this Journal by JE Gallagher (2013) outlined the formation of BASCD on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of its founding. It describes well a range of issues which had to be addressed at the time and in the period leading up to recognition of the specialty but says nothing about what it felt like at the time. I remember well the letter written by Geoffrey Slack (1972) to the BDJ drawing attention to the importance of a population approach to oral health. My own interest in the area had started many years before while in general practice in Huddersfield. After a somewhat naïve attempt to run a substantial dental health education programme I was appointed Chief Dental Officer to Huddersfield County Borough. The routine visits to schools in the mid-1960s immediately demonstrated not only the overall poor oral health of the child population but also the alarming social, ethnic and local variations. I am proud that information about the situation which I presented to the Council resulted in the introduction of water fluoridation. This was especially pleasing since Huddersfield was the home town of the secretary of the National Pure Water Association. This together with another scheme introduced after my move to Cheshire in 1968 undoubtedly contributed more to the health of the population than all of my other efforts over the years. I was fortunate in 1970 to be able to study for a MSc at Manchester University and I must pay tribute to Phil Holloway for his initiative in establishing this opportunity. The benefits of this course included extensive involvement with the University Department of Public Health and those studying for qualifications in Community Medicine. It also had the benefit of making contact with Teddy Chester, Professor in the Department of Social Administration. He was an internationally respected expert on health services and played a key role in running the training courses at the Manchester Business School for key NHS staff in the lead up to the 1974 reorganisation. Teddy used to hold forth at considerable length about the similarities in health services around the world. He described the impact of demographic change, the escalating costs of developing technology and the problems of persuading politicians and populations to pay for it all. He made a presentation entitled “Health Care – A World Problem” to the Scientific Meeting of the Association in June 1974. This was forty years ago and it is obvious that the same problems are now an even more pressing preoccupation.
Correspondence to: tomdowell@btinternet.com

Article Price
£15.00
Institution Article Price
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Page Start
132
Page End
133
Authors
T. Dowell

Articles from this issue

  • Title
  • Pg. Start
  • Pg. End

  1. Editorial - The Challenges of Scientific Publishing
  2. 130
  3. 131

  1. The origins of BASCD and the Specialty of Dental Public Health: Some personal memories
  2. 132
  3. 133

  1. Dental Public Health in Action - Oral health education and disease prevention in primary dental care: Insight from a pilot intervention targeting children aged 0-7 years in northeast England
  2. 134
  3. 137

  1. Caries prevalence in 12-year-old children from Germany: Results of the 2009 national survey
  2. 138
  3. 142

  1. Longitudinal register study of attendance frequencies in public and private dental services in Finland
  2. 143
  3. 148

  1. The geographic distribution of patients seeking emergency dental care at the Royal Dental Hospital of Melbourne, Australia
  2. 149
  3. 154

  1. Using GIS to analyse dental practice distribution in Indiana, USA
  2. 155
  3. 160

  1. Oral health care services utilisation in the adult US population: Medical Expenditure Panel Survey 2006
  2. 161
  3. 167

  1. Dental infections increase the likelihood of hospital admissions among adult patients with sickle cell disease
  2. 168
  3. 172

  1. Preschool teachers as agents of oral health promotion: an intervention study in Sri Lanka
  2. 173
  3. 177

  1. Oral health literacy and information sources among adults in Tehran, Iran
  2. 178
  3. 182

  1. Child oral health-related quality of life (COHQoL), enamel defects of the first permanent molars and caries experience among children in Western Australia
  2. 183
  3. 188

  1. Oral health-related quality of life in non-syndromic cleft lip and/or palate patients: a systematic review
  2. 189
  3. 195