Cultural Competence and Health Literacy in Oral Disease Prevention

Oral diseases remain among the most common—and preventable—health conditions worldwide, yet avoidable burden persists and concentrates in underserved and minoritized communities. These inequities reflect the combined effects of social determinants, access to preventive services and dental care, and cultural and communication barriers that shape whether prevention messages, risk information, and care pathways make sense in real life.Cultural competence (and the related concepts of cultural humility and structural competence) and health literacy sit at the center of effective oral disease prevention and access to care. Culturally responsive, trauma-informed communication can build trust and strengthen shared decision-making, while health-literate systems can reduce confusion, support navigation, and help patients and caregivers act on prevention and treatment guidance across settings (community programs, schools, primary care, and dental clinics). Recent studies continue to expand this evidence base in oral health literacy measurement, determinants, and outcomes, including in populations living with chronic conditions and in disease-specific contexts. For example, recent work has examined the relationships between oral health literacy, self-efficacy, and periodontitis-related outcomes among adults with type 2 diabetes. Likewise, emerging research explores digital routes to build oral health literacy in adolescents and older adults, and evaluates the communication skills of the oral health workforce.This Research Topic aims to bring together interdisciplinary, methodologically rigorous, and implementation-ready research on how culturally responsive and health-literate approaches can improve prevention and access to care, reduce inequities, and strengthen patient-, family-, and community-centered oral health strategies.Topics of interest include (but are not limited to) • Concepts, measurement, and methodology • Measures of oral health literacy (functional, interactive, critical), eHealth literacy, and culturally responsive care • Validity, cross-cultural adaptation, multilingual instruments, and measurement invariance • Mixed methods, realist evaluation, participatory approaches, and text-mining/communication analytics • Communication, decision-making, and language access • Risk communication, teach-back, shared decision-making, self-determination theory, and motivational interviewing in prevention • Language access, interpretation models, and the design/testing of multilingual patient education materials • Service and system approaches to equitable language services in oral health • Interventions and implementation in prevention pathways • Culturally tailored and health-literate interventions targeting caries, periodontal diseases, oral cancer prevention, and common risk factors • Co-design and community-engaged prevention (schools, community health workers, faith/community settings) • Implementation science studies on adoption, fidelity, sustainability, and scale-up • Workforce, training, and care models • Training and evaluation of cultural competence/humility and health literacy practices across the oral health workforce • Interprofessional models integrating prevention in primary care, public health, and school-based services • Patient safety and quality improvement approaches tied to communication and prevention outcomes • Equity-focused prevention across the life course • Prevention in children/adolescents, older adults, individuals with special health care needs, LGBTQ+, migrants/refugees, and other underserved groups • Structural barriers (cost, access, discrimination, navigation burden) and policy/system solutionsBy building a shared evidence base—from theory and measurement to real-world implementation—this Research Topic seeks to identify scalable, equity-oriented strategies that improve prevention uptake and access to care, strengthen patient experiences, and reduce oral health disparities. Topic editors: Michelle McQuistan, Adebola Ehizele Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/79082/cultural-competence-and-health-literacy-in-oral-disease-prevention