Grant: Intl Collaborative Indigenous Health Res Partnership Chronic Dis-full appl'n

Profound disparities in early childhood caries (ECC) exist between Indigenous and non-Indigenous children in Australia, New Zealand and Canada. If the burden of ECC and associated oral health inequalities experienced by Indigenous children in these nations are to be reduced, more needs to be done to ensure that information about achieving and maintaining optimal oral health reaches those who are caring for such children in the early life stages. This will be an interventional study, with all participants receiving the intervention benefits. Pregnant Indigenous women residing in the three countries, and their families, will be included. The intervention will be implemented from birth and continue for the first three years of a participating child's life. It will be tailored at the individual- or family-level, with each carer or family progressing to the next level only when they are ready. The intervention will be based on a range of contexts including oral health promotion, oral health protection, dental disease prevention, oral health care and maintenance, dental systems navigation and oral health literacy. Developing a functional, context-specific ECC intervention that aims to improve child oral health, in full partnership with the Indigenous communities involved, may provide useful evidence in the policy-making arena to lead to more appropriate oral health and oral health promotion program initiatives for Indigenous child groups.