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304651
Social Network Analysis of an Oral-Systemic Health Issue: Lack of Communication between Oral and Medical Health Professionals

142nd APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition (November 15 - November 19, 2014): http://www.apha.org/events-and-meetings/annual
Monday, November 17, 2014

Ellen Daley, PhD , Department of Community and Family Health, College of Public Health, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL
John Skvoretz, PhD , Department of Sociology, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL
Rita DeBate, PhD, MPH, FAED, FAAHB , Department of Community and Family Health, College of Public Health, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL
Cheryl A. Vamos, PhD, MPH , Department of Community and Family Health, College of Public Health, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL
Karen Dyer, PhD, MPH , Department of Social and Behavioral Health, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA
Nolan Kline, MA , Center for Transdisciplinary Research on Women's Health, Department of Community and Family Health, College of Public Health, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL
Background: Social network analysis has useful applications for improving health service delivery such as linking separate professions. Oral-systemic health links have been widely documented, but oral health and medical health professionals continue to operate in separate professional spheres. Improving oral-systemic health outcomes may require scholarly communication such as joint authorship and cross-referencing between health professionals in both domains. To assess current scholarly communication between the two professional communities, we conducted a social network analysis of peer reviewed oral and medical health journals.

Methodology: We employed social network analysis utilizing bibliometric methodology to examine communication between oral and medical health professionals, choosing a well-known oral-systemic health issue—pregnancy-related periodontal diseases.

Results: A total of 113 keywords applied to pregnancy and birth outcomes, and 31 applied to periodontal diseases were used to identify 824 articles in the top-ranked medical and oral health journals. Statistically significant results revealed oral and medical health professionals typically cite research within their own disciplines.

Discussion: Findings from this analysis suggest that oral-systemic health professionals not only practice in separate professional spheres, but also do not typically exchange information and research in scholarly journals. The implications of professional and research boundaries on health conditions with oral-systemic links deserves additional attention.

Conclusion:  Improving health outcomes for conditions with oral-systemic connections may require increased communication and collaboration between oral and medical health practitioners. An initial step to increase collaborative relationships may be encouraging joint scholarship and readership across professional spheres to ultimately improve delivery of care for oral-systemic health conditions.

Learning Areas:

Other professions or practice related to public health
Social and behavioral sciences

Learning Objectives:
Analyze scholarly communication between oral and systemic health professionals using social network analysis. Describe potential implications of findings on oral-systemic health concerns.

Keyword(s): Oral Health, Network Analysis

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have been investigator or co-investigator of many grants exploring women's oral-systemic health needs and am Co-director of the Center for Transdisicplinary Research in Women's Health at the University of South Florida, which has a research focus on oral-systemic health issues among women. As Co-director of this center, I have published numerous articles on women's oral systemic health and organized two conferences based on oral-systemic health connections.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

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