2016 Volume 65 Issue 4 Pages 385-393
For individual elderly people to continue living in their community with a healthy lifestyle that suits them, it is necessary to provide various kinds of support and appropriate health care and welfare services that match the status and changes of individual elderly people. As a system working toward this goal, the establishment and promotion of community-based integrated care systems are in progress.
A paradigm shift is urgently required from conventional health care services, completed in respective medical institutions, to integrated health care and long-term care that are supported by local communities. In the fields of dental and oral health and dental service (collectively "dental health care") as well, it is expected that diverse specialists will cooperate and collaborate with each other.
In this context, the revised Long-Term Care Insurance Act requires each municipality to make efforts to hold community-based care conferences as a key to the realization of community-based integrated care supported by collaboration and cooperation. While the act explicitly includes dentists and dental hygienists as members of the conferences, it cannot be said that the adequate participation of dental health care providers has been achieved at community-based care conferences.
Promoting collaboration between dental health care providers and other specialists in the community is urgently required. Nurses and public health nurses are expected to play significant roles in such collaboration. Public health nurses have established close relationships with dental health care providers through oral care services provided at infant medical checkups and long-term care prevention. As administrative health care professionals, public health nurses have recognized the importance of oral care, and have represented the administration in the effective deployment of home dental services as well as local dental service and oral health activities by dental health care providers.
In principle, it is required that community-based integrated care should be promoted as part of overall community development for all local residents, including not only elderly people but also children with disabilities and other vulnerable people. Public health nurses are expected to leverage their collaborative experience in past activities, thereby functioning as a hub and contact point for dental health care providers in the promotion of community-based integrated care. At the same time, dental health care providers are expected to start their engagement in initiatives toward the realization of community-based integrated care by participating in community-based care conferences, leveraging collaboration with nurses and public health nurses.
