Improving the oral health of seniors in long-term care facilities is a constant goal for dental public health specialist Dr. Anil Menon. He wants to help residents smile with confidence every time.
“We still have a lot to do,” says Dr. Menon, assistant professor of preventive dental sciences at the Gerald Niznick School of Dentistry and the only dental public health specialist in Manitoba.
He points out that many seniors suffer in silence for a long time, and their oral health is often neglected. This is due to a series of systemic barriers. For example, there are not enough caregivers, lack of oral care training, lack of dental equipment in nursing homes, and failure to include oral health in the overall care plan of individuals.
In addition, poor economic conditions, limited mobility and cognitive impairment make it difficult for these seniors to get the dental care they need.
To this end, Dr. Menon is developing an oral health screening tool that can be used to guide caregivers to assess the dental and oral condition of residents. The tool combines descriptions of the condition with photo examples to help caregivers, nurses and doctors quickly identify problems.
His research also extends across the province, and he is currently interviewing elderly residents and their families to understand their actual needs. They generally report that nursing homes lack regular, convenient dental services, it is difficult to find dental professionals willing to visit, and the cost of out-of-home visits is too high.
In contrast, Manitoba lags behind regions such as British Columbia and Ontario in terms of mobile dental services and caregiver training.
In a recent study published in the journal Frontiers in Oral Health, Dr. Menon’s team analyzed Canada’s new dental health plan for seniors and recommended that the federal government provide on-site dental services in every nursing facility. They also called for higher compensation for dental professionals to reflect the complexity of their work in these settings.
Born in Abu Dhabi, Dr. Menon received a bachelor’s degree in dental surgery in India, then went to the United States to pursue a master’s degree in business administration and ultimately a master’s degree in dental public health at the University of Toronto. He said that seeing firsthand the inequities that disadvantaged groups face in oral health care was the driving force behind his career in public health.
“Public health provides us with a path to address structural problems and promote equitable care,” he said.
His research also reveals the special challenges that older immigrants in Canada face in terms of oral health. In 2022, his research published in the International Journal of Applied Dental Sciences showed that about 17% of older immigrants considered their oral health to be “fair or poor”, while among Canadian-born seniors, this proportion was only 10.5%.
He pointed out that language barriers, lack of dental insurance, and differences in cultural concepts are all important reasons for this gap.
“My goal is to make policymakers see the seriousness of these problems and promote substantial improvements to meet the needs of this often neglected group.” Dr. Menon said.