Educational activities

The Community Oral Health Department contributes in undergraduate dentistry program and to run postgraduate (MSc, MDPH, PhD) programs. The discipline is concerned with promoting the health of a population and therefore focuses action at a community level as opposed to an individual. It is underpinned by a range of related sciences, e.g. Disease Prevention, Epidemiology and Research Methodology, Health Services Management, and Planning and Behavioral Sciences.

The undergraduate program is delivered from the beginning (the first semester with Oral Health-Public Health) and continues through the 5th to 9th and then 11th semesters. Totally, The Community Oral Health Department is involved in teaching of 4 theoretical, 3 practical, 3 workshop, and 1 internship credits of dental schools’ undergraduate curriculum, totaling 11 credits. In addition, this department takes part in the training of the integrative courses of “dental tissue in health and disease”, “infection control”, “Comprehensive care dentistry 1,2”, “Gerodontology” and “Nutrition”.

Currently, there are 29 postgraduate students studying in the community oral health. Internationally, postgraduate programs include Ph.D. (4 years), MSc (2.5 years) and MDPH (2 years).

Research activities

The research activities of the department are in the form of research projects, the presentation of articles at national and international congresses, the publication of articles and books related to the community oral health and in participation with other faculty departments and Research Center for caries prevention

• Epidemiological studies and oral health promotion interventions (decay, periodontal, oral cancer, trauma, malocclusion)
• Planning and evaluating oral health promotion for the population programs
• Designing and evaluating oral care systems
• Communication and collaboration with other health related sections
• Using modern technology and optimizing the quality of education and preventive care
• Investigating the need for human resources in oral health care systems
• Investigating, revision and validation of dentistry educational courses
• Planning and evaluating new teaching methods in dentistry education
• Evidence-based dentistry
• Health economics and the cost-effectiveness of interventions
• Qualitative research on oral health
• Designing, preparing and validating the questionnaire as a research tool