Australian Centre for Integration of Oral Health (ACIOH)

ACIOH is the leading national research centre in integrated oral health care. With formal partnerships with health services across the country, ACIOH includes a multidisciplinary team spanning health and dental professionals, universities, policy makers, professional organisations and consumers.

The key focus of ACIOH is on capacity building the broader health workforce to promote oral health and conversely, for the dental workforce to play a role in general health. ACIOH works to upskill the community and develop new integrated models of oral health care across people’s lifespans.

Key initiatives

• Use of AI to democratise oral health care in remote, regional and priority populations
• Co-design and implementation of new models of care that are clinically effective, cost effective and sustainable for health services. ACIOH’s flagship program is the Midwifery Initiated Oral Health-Dental Service (MIOH-DS) involving trained midwives providing oral health education, screening and referrals to pregnant women to support national antenatal care guidelines. THE MIOH-DS has been adopted into policy and practice across Australia and was endorsed by the World Health organisation as a case study for implementing Non-Communicable Disease Guidelines
• National oral health CPD training programs for health care providers – endorsed by the Australian College of Midwives and Australian Diabetes Educators Association
• Undergraduate oral health training modules integrated into nursing and midwifery curriculum at Australian universities
• Short, validated oral health screening tools to support health care providers
• Oral health promotional resources endorsed by NSW Health and other state organisations
• New models of care to expand the scope of practice of public oral health practitioners, eg:
  • Height and weight screening to address childhood obesity
  • Domestic violence screening in dental settings