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The International Dental Research Agenda—The FDI World Dental Federation

¹ FDI Science Manager, Institute of Clinical Dentistry, University of Oslo, PO Box 1109 Blindern, N-0317 Oslo, Norway;
² FDI Executive Director, FDI World Dental Federation, 13 Chemin du Levant, l’Avant Centre, F-01210 Ferney-Voltaire, France; and
³ Chairman, FDI Science Commission, KaVo, PO Box 1454, D-88396 Biberach, Germany;

*corresponding author, jokstad{at}odont.uio.no

KEY WORDS: science • research support • quality assurance in health care • practice guidelines

The FDI World Dental Federation was established 102 years ago and is accepted worldwide as the dental organization responsible for bringing together the dental profession and to be the international voice of dentistry. The FDI currently has more than 150 national dental associations as members, and these represent about 700,000 dentists worldwide. Other members include more than 30 national and international professional associations, including the dental industry.

One of the FDI’s missions is "to advance and promote the art, science and practice of dentistry". Various commissions and committees have been established to pursue this goal. Strictly defined, the FDI cannot be characterized as an organization where actual scientific research is being carried out. Rather, the FDI has adopted the responsibility to synthesize and evaluate oral health research so that new and important research findings can be conveyed to the practicing dental community. One of the venues where this is done is at the FDI’s Annual World Dental Congress, which attracts some 10,000 to 40,000 registrants. Given this important role of the FDI, it is evident that there is a need for the FDI to maintain a close working relationship with the oral health research communities in the IADR.

It is important for the FDI to address issues of importance and relevance to its Member Associations. Therefore, the FDI Head Office conducts regular surveys of the Member Associations to solicit those issues which are considered to be of prime interest and concern for their individual members. The FDI Science Commission deals with the requests for information received from the Member Associations that relate to dental science issues.

The Science Commission consists of 12 individuals. The Chairman and six commissioners are scientists elected by the FDI General Assembly and Council. In addition, the WHO, the ISO, and the IADR each has one representative, appointed by the relevant organization, on the Science Commission. The present IADR representative is Professor John Clarkson (current IADR President). The committee in the FDI responsible for the organization of the programs for the FDI Annual World Dental Congresses is also represented on the Commission.

A well-tried and -tested system exists for the addressing of proposals for Science Commission projects. The Science Commission Chairman and Vice-chairman carry out the initial screening of proposals and appoint a member of the Commission to draft terms of references (ToR) for the project. A pre-set format is applied for the ToR draft, which includes the main aims and the objectives of the project, the timeframe, the methods or mode of work, the experts needed, the anticipated outcome, a tentative budget, recommendations for action, and eventual follow-up proposals. Once a project has been adopted as an official FDI project, a project manager (who should be a member of the Science Commission) and a project leader (a content expert on the topic) are appointed. Many of the current and previous project experts are active IADR members. The final product of a project is usually a review that has been approved by the Science Commission and by external referees, before being published in a dental journal. The two most common journals for these reviews have been the FDI World and the International Dental Journal (see Table).

One of the biggest problems in oral health research has been chronic under-funding, which is reflected by imperfect study designs and inadequate reporting. Consequently, the critical appraisal of individual studies in dentistry to establish internal and external validity is a time-consuming and difficult process. Carrying out a systematic review according to the International Cochrane Collaboration process and format entails considerable effort. A recurring dilemma is that the insightful appraisal of many key issues requires significant resources that are not readily available. This explains why the FDI Science Commission project reviews have a format that can be characterized as a traditional narrative style. For the same reason, the FDI Science Commission attempts not to duplicate others’ efforts. Many professional organizations today carry out systematic reviews and provide clinical guidelines, and the FDI steadily tries to keep track of these reports. The guidelines and statements that are considered as evidence-based are presented on www.fdiworldental.org/guidelines.

It is imperative to highlight the question of who is actually responsible for making sure that new research is being implemented for the ultimate benefit of the patients. It is easy to respond that it is of course the individual dentist, but the answer is more complex than this. Today’s practitioners need adequate help to succeed in achieving this. The FDI believes that we must work together to transfer science to the general practitioners of the world, and we extend an invitation to all to provide assistance to make this possible.

We are happy to announce that the FDI will organize a Lunch/Seminar at the 2003 IADR General Session in Göteborg, Sweden, for the officers of IADR’s Scientific Groups, and we look forward to doing this in the forthcoming years. We hope that a focus will be set on the need for interactive work between the IADR and the FDI and the necessity to transfer science to the practicing dental community. We applaud the new initiative within the IADR to establish the International Collaboration on Evidence-based Dentistry (ICEBD), and the FDI looks forward to an active and mutually beneficial interaction with ICEBD and the special Groups in the IADR.

Received December 2, 2002; Accepted December 10, 2002

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