Indicators of integrating oral health care within universal health coverage and general health care in low-, middle-, and high-income countries: a scoping review

BACKGROUND: The World Health Organization (WHO) has recently devoted special attention to oral health and oral health care recommending the latter becoming part of universal health coverage (UHC) so as to reduce oral health inequalities across the globe. In this context, as countries consider acting on this recommendation, it is essential to develop a monitoring framework to measure the progress of integrating oral health/health care into UHC. This study aimed to identify existing measures in the literature that could be used to indicate oral health/health care integration within UHC across a range of low-, middle- and high-income countries. METHODS: A scoping review was conducted by searching MEDLINE via Ovid, CINAHL, and Ovid Global Health databases. There were no quality or publication date restrictions in the search strategy. An initial search by an academic librarian was followed by the independent reviewing of all identified articles by two authors for inclusion or exclusion based on the relevance of the work in the articles to the review topic. The included articles were all published in English. Articles concerning which the reviewers disagreed on inclusion or exclusion were reviewed by a third author, and subsequent discussion resulted in agreement on which articles were to be included and excluded. The included articles were reviewed to identify relevant indicators and the results were descriptively mapped using a simple frequency count of the indicators. RESULTS: The 83 included articles included work from a wide range of 32 countries and were published between 1995 and 2021. The review identified 54 indicators divided into 15 categories. The most frequently reported indicators were in the following categories: dental service utilization, oral health status, cost/service/population coverage, finances, health facility access, and workforce and human resources. This study was limited by the databases searched and the use of English-language publications only. CONCLUSIONS: This scoping review identified 54 indicators in a wide range of 15 categories of indicators that have the potential to be used to evaluate the integration of oral health/health care into UHC across a wide range of countries. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12903-023-02906-2.