National Dental Inspection Programme
The National Dental Inspection Programme (NDIP) gathers appropriate information to inform parents of the dental/oral health status of their children; and through appropriately anonymised, aggregated data advises the Scottish Government, NHS boards and other organisations concerned with children's health of the oral disease prevalence in their area. The 2003 inspection was the first and pilot year of the new NDIP programme and concerned only Primary 1 children. It now includes both Primary 1 and Primary 7 children.
The inspection programme has two levels:
- A Basic Inspection, which all children in Primary 1 and Primary 7 receive.
- A Detailed (epidemiological) Inspection, for a representative sample of this group, concerning P1 and P7 children in alternate years.
The Basic dataset has been managed and hosted by ISD since 2004, and Detailed data since 2009 (previously the University of Dundee analysed these data for NHS boards). From 2011, ISD will not only manage and host these data but also publish annual NDIP reports under National Statistics. The move to publishing this dataset under National Statistics will support the delivery of timely and quality publications.
ISD also assists in the annual role of analysing and producing reports for a national training and calibration programme for examination teams involved in NDIP.
NHS boards and Community Health Partnerships (CHPs) have an essential need for data from NDIP for targeted delivery of oral health improvement programmes: accordingly, ISD further supports the wider service by providing the Scottish Public Health Observatory (ScotPHO) with bespoke analysis of data from the Basic component of NDIP for CHP profile indicator 59 / Children and Young People profile indicator 12 ("Dental health in P1"), which covers all children in their first year at primary school.
The 2011 NDIP report and its executive summary were published by ISD Scotland on behalf of the Scottish Dental Epidemiology Coordinating Committee on 29th November 2011.
