Co-designing and Evaluating Oral Health Promotion Interventions for Vulnerable Groups

A new approach to research is emerging that involves the public, service users and health researchers in generating knowledge, developing interventions, and evaluating health promotion programs. Co-design describes active collaboration with stakeholders to create solutions to recognized problems. Co-design is underpinned by a Participatory Action Research (PAR) research paradigm that emphasizes power sharing, which is particularly relevant to research on traditionally socially excluded groups. This series adopts an empowerment definition of vulnerability to showcase co-design in practice: how researchers have developed and evaluated oral health interventions that have worked with, instead of on people who are perceived as vulnerable. Using an Inclusion Oral Health framework, we can highlight how social exclusion is produced and experienced, and its impact on oral health outcomes and social justice.

This Research Topic will showcase research on developing innovative ways to engage and to involve under-represented groups in oral health and health promotion research, and interventions to reduce social exclusion and inequities. One of the current challenges of health promotion research is the need to increase participation of vulnerable and marginalized groups, with regards to what is important and what is needed from their perspective. This requires the adoption of new methodological and theoretical frameworks that can enable researchers to appropriately represent the nature and complexity of health promotion issues in society from the perspective of people and communities.

This scope of the Research Topic will include papers presenting:

(i) Research methodologies, theoretical frameworks and methodological issues related to co-designing oral health
(ii) Innovation research methods and engagement approaches to intervention development and evaluations
(iii) Case studies describing examples of developing, implementing, and evaluating co-designed oral health interventions sharing lessons, challenges, and solutions.

We encourage research from across the globe in different contexts and settings, focused on vulnerable populations including (but not restricted to): people experiencing homelessness, BME groups, refugees, people with experience of the justice system, prison, ex-offenders (community returners), people experiencing alcohol and drug abuse, sex workers, people with disabilities, people living with HIV/AIDS among others.

We will consider the following types of empirical studies: controlled trials, cohort studies, case-control studies, natural experiments, mixed-method evaluations, qualitative studies, policy studies, feasibility studies and case studies. Papers can also report opinions with evidence, and papers presenting evidence from scoping reviews and systematic reviews.