
Dear colleagues,
Best wishes for 2025!
It is my pleasure to be writing my first blog as the new Dental Public Health Consultant for Lancashire and Cumbria. I started in post in August and have spent a whirlwind few months getting to know who’s who and where’s where. Most recently I’ve been working in academia and my previous DPH Consultant role and specialist training was in Greater Manchester. Everyone in Lancashire and South Cumbria (LSC) has been very welcoming, and I have been really pleased to find such close working relationships between the dental commissioners and Local Dental Network (LDN), Local Dental Committees (LDCs), and public health teams in the local authorities.
I often hear that the work of a Consultant in Dental Public Health (DPH) is a bit of a mystery to most in the profession, so I will take this opportunity to explain a little more about what we do…
The specialty of DPH is the branch of dentistry that is primarily concerned with preventing oral disease and promoting oral health for whole population groups. DPH is dentistry on a macro scale where we care for the population as our patient, and swap ‘treatment planning’ for ‘system planning’, including for both healthcare services and health promotion programmes. A broad range of clinical experience is an essential requirement for entry to DPH specialty training and before training, I worked in clinical dentistry (CDS, hospital special care, NHS GDS and private practice) for 10 years.

In terms of the work day to day, we mostly get involved during the planning and evaluation phases of projects, collaborating with stakeholders to inform their decisions on the best use of their finite resources and to plan the approach. We work to increase awareness of priority public health issues and to help system partners identify the evidence-based actions they can take to address the issues. As we work across different organisations within the system, we also have a role in bringing partners together to shape joint working.

Ongoing Work and Support
Some of my current work to update you on in LSC includes working with the ICB and LDN to establish an ‘LSC Oral Health Strategic Partnership Group’. This group brings together the NHS dental commissioners and LDN representatives with the five local authority public health commissioners for oral health prevention programmes.
The first meeting was held in December 2024. The aim is to facilitate collaboration, share learning and best practice, and increase implementation of evidence-based prevention outside of clinical services. There are already lots of good prevention programmes in place locally. Building on this excellent work, the greatest impact will be achieved by working in partnership to do what we know works ‘at scale’. This means maximum coverage of fluoride-based interventions delivered through both clinical services and community settings like schools, nurseries and family hubs.
In addition to improving child quality of life, school readiness and reducing the need for dental treatment, the core fluoride-based prevention programmes are cost saving overall, as demonstrated by the PHE Return on Investment infographic below.

At the time of writing, we are awaiting imminent news of whether the North East proposal to expand coverage of water fluoridation has been approved. If approved, this will be the first expansion since the early 1990s, and may pave the way for further consultations on expansion in other regions.

National Dental Survey
This year will see the first ever national dental survey of the over 65s living in care homes. This is a nationally co-ordinated survey, commissioned locally by local authorities and with dental examinations delivered by survey fieldwork teams. There are many different organisations involved in the delivery of this survey and as you can imagine there are several challenges in relation to dental examinations in care homes. It is however, essential to have information on the growing oral health needs of this vulnerable population, and to ensure that everything is carried out in accordance with a strict national protocol. My role is to provide support with local survey arrangements within Cumbria and Lancashire and I would like to thank LDC colleagues for their recent assistance in disseminating information about it to practices.
Finally, the LDC have passed on recent requests for information in relation to the management of dental patients with TB. Watch this space for up to date and locally tailored information, produced in collaboration with colleagues in the UK Health Security Agency (UK HSA) and ICB TB specialist nurses.
Many thanks for reading and for this opportunity to shed a bit more light on the small speciality of DPH. If anyone is interested in hearing more about routes into specialist training for DPH, or clinical academic pathways, please do get in touch!
Looking forward to working with you all in future,
Dr Deborah Moore
PhD, BDS, MPH, MSc, FDS RCS(Eng), FHEA
Consultant Dental Public Health
Public Health Directorate
NHS England (North West)
Phone: 07872 815 450
Email: Deborah.moore24@nhs.net
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