Our focus
Building a game-changing digital platform
In collaboration with our partners and community, we’re co-developing a digital platform designed to help health and community service professionals provide preventive oral health support – quickly and easily.
Grounded in the latest evidence and informed by lived expertise, the platform will provide simple, actionable guidance on preventive oral health for the people who need it most, right at the point of care.
The platform will include bite-sized preventive oral health education for professionals, culturally safe resources for clients, and tailored responses and recommendations for improving oral health and wellbeing.
The platform will empower health and community services professionals to start the conversation, offer practical preventive support, and provide their clients with the science behind oral health.
Our aim is to support trusted professionals feel confident talking about oral health, to open the door to better health and better lives for the people they support.
Our approach
Our work is underpinned by the principals of Minimum Intervention Dentistry (MID), an evidence-based model of tooth decay care. MID recognises that things like tooth decay are preventable conditions, and that the best outcomes happen when people are supported to care for their own oral health.
This means addressing risk factors, supporting behaviour change, and using conservative treatment approaches when needed. MID also supports personalised care, where people are actively involved in their oral health, and professionals play a coaching role alongside clinical care.
Prevention of oral disease (affecting teeth, gums, soft tissues and jaw system) includes not just primary prevention of tooth decay (stopping disease ever starting in teeth) but also lifelong preventive strategies for all parts of the mouth, to ensure the best functional, cosmetic and general health outcomes.
The causes of oral disease and the lifelong management of oral health requires attention to both the background processes that lead to oral disease and the broader context in which people find themselves.
People who have experienced oral disease require accessible, lifelong, preventive strategies to support them into the future. This is particularly important for people facing cultural, financial or geographic barriers to conventional care.
FRED brings these principles to life by providing people with evidence-based information, support, and resources to enhance their oral health, and maintain it into the future.
Our approach aligns with key recommendations in the final report of the Senate Select Committee’s final report on the Provision of and Access to Dental Services in Australia, “A system in decay: a review into Dental Services in Australia.”
This includes recognising that oral health is an essential part of overall health, upskilling health practitioners on basic oral health, better integration of oral health into primary care, and improving access for priority groups.
Our health promotion approach is informed by internationally recognised frameworks including:
The Rio Declaration
We also adopt the Common Cause values-based approach to framing and messaging, which aims to engage people’s intrinsic values to motivate change.
