Vol. 52, No. 4,Summer 1992

197

Letter to the Editor To the Editor: We have read Professor Wotman’s excellent article “Dental Public Health: New Opportunities-New Responsibilities”(JPublicHealth Dent, Spring 1991)with much interest. When he emphasizes the role of public health dentistry as a specialty, we should like to describe briefly the situation in Finland, where we have in dentistry a specialty in health administration. His article expresses many things that are topics of discussion here in Finland, too. We have both a public delivery system and a private sector that account for half of dental services. Public health care is carried out by municipalities and financed by them and by the state. Now the financing and monitoring (carried out by the Health Ministry) systems are changing and municipalities will have a freer hand to organize public health care. This also means that accountability for dental health of the population will be stressed. This is one example of the new situations that the health care system will more often encounter and in which public health skills are required, e.g., in the form of evaluation and administration. In Finland we have four public dental schools, three of which have a department of community dentistry. Specialty training is one of the activitiesof the dental schools. Other specialties along with health administration are: orthodontics, oral surgery, and clinical dentistry. Clinical dentistry is centered in one of the following areas: preventive dentistry and cariology, periodontology, prosthodontics, or oral pathology. Specialty training takes four years in oral surgery and three years in other specialties. In the health administration specialty, training comprises theoretical courses and practice, which is performed in the department of com-

munity dentistry and in administration under the Ministry of Health. Practice consists of various administrative planning and evaluation activities and participating in surveys. Theoretical courses cover, for example, the following items: 0 epidemiology and biostatistics economics and health economics sociology and health sociology health education preventive dentistry 0 ethics in health care philosophy of science 0 nutrition use of computers personnel management leadership in health care social policy and health policy health care legislation. The specialty in vhealth administration is quite new in this form (since 1986). Although the contents of the examination are much the same as in the MPH examination, they are formally not entirely equivalent. The purpose of the training program is to have specialists in planning, monitoring, and leadership activities of dental health care in municipal health centersor in health administration of the state. Leena Ryyniinen Sqzpo Turunen Heikki Vesala Postgraduate students in health administration University of Kuopio Finland

Dental public health: new opportunities--new responsibilities.

Vol. 52, No. 4,Summer 1992 197 Letter to the Editor To the Editor: We have read Professor Wotman’s excellent article “Dental Public Health: New Oppo...
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