2022 Volume 43 Issue 2 Pages 109-114
Public health centers play a major role as a window and keystone for collaboration among the many professions involved in dental care in the community. However, the actual status regarding their involvement in pediatric home dental care is not clear. Therefore, in order to grasp the actual status of coordination and provision of pediatric home dental care, we identified issues and examined future initiatives at public health centers/health and welfare offices (public health centers, etc.) in Kanagawa Prefecture.
Responses were obtained from 23 of the 32 targeted public health centers/health and welfare offices (public health centers, etc.) (response rate : 71.9%). Public health nurses provided the largest number of consultations regarding pediatric home dental care, and the most common organization to collaborate with was the welfare and public health center. Public health nurses were the most frequently asked to share information. As a problem in cooperating with dentistry in pediatric home dental care, many institutions (73.9%) responded that it was difficult to grasp the actual situation. 82.6% of the institutions responded that training sessions were needed, and all institutions indicated that they would like to utilize a list of dentists who can provide pediatric home dental care.
These results suggest that there is an urgent need to share and provide detailed information on the provision of pediatric home dental care, to develop a system of collaboration between local health centers and dental institutions, and to train personnel to provide pediatric home dental care.
