Volume 8 • 2021 • Issue 5

around. Following discussions with the research team, they agreed to include younger children, so the sample in this next survey will include Canadians from age 1 to 79. We also wanted to look at the possibility of including people older than 79 because obviously there are many Canadians with a range of health and oral health issues in their 80s and older. However, Statistics Canada was not quite ready for this in the upcoming survey, but they will consider increasing the upper age range for any future surveys, for both general health and oral health measures. Q Why is there a need for such a large-scale study? PA: It’s important to have studies that examine the health status of a representative sample of Canadians, which in the upcoming survey will include approximately 7,000 participants across the country. We need to know how healthy we are as a population because this information is required for future planning and research. It’s needed for policy reasons, but also for scientific reasons. Unfortunately, one of the byproducts of the separation of oral health care and general health care is that although the general health survey is conducted every 2–3 years, the oral health component is not included with the same frequency. So, every 10 to 15 years, we try to find a way to have oral health included. Fortunately, through the efforts of Dr. James Taylor and the team at the Office of the Chief Dental Officer of Canada, along with Statistics Canada, we’ve managed to include oral health in the next iteration. Thanks to their hard work, we’ll be able to make comparisons with the 2007–09 CHMS results as well as comparisons with data from other countries. We’ll see what aspects of health and health care are getting better, which are getting worse, but also look at new emerging issues in terms of diseases and oral health care. The timing of this research project is also important because there are debates in Canada at the moment amongst politicians, provincially and federally, about the need to look at essential dental care. There’s evidence that suggests increasing inequalities between affluent and disadvantaged groups here in Canada. And then there’s scientific questions that are emerging, as we want to better understand the links between oral health and general health. This is a fantastic research opportunity as they’ll not only be collecting clinical oral health data, but they’ll also be collecting blood, urine, saliva, and other physical measures that should shed light on oral health-general health questions. It’s going to be a very thorough investigation of the health of Canadians. Q What type of questions or data collection will take place? Will it be self-reported data? PA: There will be those type of questions as well as a thorough clinical exam. This means there will be a dentist examining people’s mouths to takemeasures of periodontal health, caries experience, etc. But the questions will be posed by the interviewers so that the survey participants are not completing the questions themselves. Another aspect of the survey is that they will be going into people’s houses and collecting the tap water so we can measure fluoride in the local water supply and look at these levels. This is quite timely as results have come out recently from the long-term study of fluoridation cessation and children’s dental caries rates, comparing school age children in Edmonton to those in Calgary, where the Calgary city council voted to remove fluoride from its municipal water supply (p. 38). I think it’s important for us to look at these types of indicators and this survey will help us investigate these issues. Q While we wait for the data analyses and reports, is there anything that we in the dental profession ought to be thinking about or doing, as individuals or as organizations? PA: We could use this time while we’re waiting for the data to mobilize people in the community, the dental professions, but also the public and patient groups. We can help prepare to use the data to help make the best decisions possible for the oral health of Canadians. We will be talking to many different groups to let them know this survey will be happening. In the next few years, we will engage with researchers and leaders in the dental profession and politicians tomake sure that we’re ready and thinking about these issues. When we have hard evidence about the changes to oral health over the last 15 years, we’ll be in a better position, as a profession, to make decisions about how we can best serve all Canadians. Watch the full conversation with Dr. Allison on CDA Oasis: vimeo.com/577354264 Funding to collect oral health data as part of the CHMS is being provided by theCanadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Institute for Musculoskeletal Health and Arthritis (IMHA), the CIHR institute that looks after oral health research. 20 | 2021 | Issue 5 News and Events