Digital Oral Health Promotion for Equity: Designing, Implementing, and Evaluating Scalable Interventions

Digital technologies are reshaping how oral health information, prevention, and care can be delivered across diverse populations and settings. Mobile applications, telehealth, artificial intelligence, social media, wearable technologies, digital education, and other innovations have created new opportunities to promote oral health, support healthy behaviors, improve access to evidence-based information, and reduce disparities. However, ensuring that these approaches are effective, acceptable, sustainable, and equitable requires rigorous design, implementation, and evaluation. This Research Topic welcomes research that advances the science and practice of digital oral health promotion across the life course and in a wide range of contexts. We invite contributions describing the development, implementation, evaluation, and scaling of digital interventions, as well as studies addressing user engagement, health equity, implementation challenges, policy, ethics, and real-world impact.Despite rapid advances in digital technologies, their potential to improve oral health promotion has not been fully realized. Many digital interventions remain limited in scale, are insufficiently evaluated, or fail to reach populations that could benefit the most because of barriers related to access, digital literacy, affordability, language, accessibility, or implementation. Furthermore, evidence is often fragmented across technologies, settings, and population groups, making it difficult to identify effective and scalable approaches. This Research Topic aims to bring together high-quality evidence that advances the development, implementation, evaluation, and translation of digital oral health promotion interventions into routine practice. We welcome studies on a broad range of digital approaches, including mobile and web-based interventions, telehealth, artificial intelligence, social media, digital games, wearable and connected devices, virtual and augmented reality, digital education, and emerging technologies. Contributions addressing behavioral, clinical, implementation, economic, ethical, and policy perspectives are encouraged, as are interdisciplinary and participatory approaches that promote equity, sustainability, user-centered design, and integration within health systems. By showcasing innovations alongside robust evaluations, this collection seeks to accelerate the adoption of effective digital strategies that improve oral health for diverse populations worldwide.This Research Topic welcomes research on digital oral health promotion. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:• the design, development, adaptation, implementation, evaluation, and scale-up of digital interventions;• behavior change and user engagement;• artificial intelligence, mobile health, telehealth, wearable technologies, social media, digital education, virtual and augmented reality, and other emerging technologies;• digital solutions for underserved populations and reducing oral health inequities;• implementation science, co-design, and participatory approaches; economic evaluations, sustainability, ethics, privacy, and governance;• digital workforce development;• and integration of digital interventions into health systems, schools, workplaces, and communities.We encourage interdisciplinary research using quantitative, qualitative, mixed-methods, and implementation science approaches from diverse geographic, cultural, and resource settings across the life course. Topic editors: Maha El Tantawi, Nisreen Al Jallad, Walter Y. H. Lam Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/84253/digital-oral-health-promotion-for-equity-designing-implementing-and-evaluating-scalable-interventions