Promoting Oral Health through Programs in Middle Childhood and Adolescence

Oral diseases are among the most common diseases worldwide, particularly for school-age children and adolescents. They pose significant public health problems for all countries and entail substantial health, social, and economic impacts. Simple and effective interventions exist to prevent most oral diseases. The school setting, among others, plays an important role.This chapter describes oral disease control priorities for school-age children and adolescents ages 5–19 years. Oral diseases and effective population-based interventions are highlighted in two other chapters in the Disease Control Priorities (third edition) series: chapter 10 in volume 1 (Niederman, Feres, and Ogunbodede 2015) and chapter 5 in volume 3 (Sankaranarayanan and others 2015). Definitions of age groupings and age-specific terminology used in this volume can be found in chapter 1 (Bundy and others 2017).