Project description

The overall aim is to provide and implement a blueprint model for improving quality and safety of oral care for everyone: the DELIVER Quality Improvement Model. As highlighted in the 2021 WHO Oral Health Resolution, many EU citizens do not have access to quality oral care. This causes detrimental impacts for the individual citizen, while increasing costs and wasting resources on the macro level. However, there is a serious lack of synergistic oral care quality improvement. To address this complex systems problem, DELIVER will break new grounds by enabling deliberative dialogues between multiple stakeholders from multiple sectors directed at meaningful improvement of the quality and safety of oral healthcare on all levels of care delivery. Through involving citizens, patients, providers and policymakers, DELIVER will create a synergistic problem-solving ecosystem in the context of improving quality and safety of oral healthcare at practice-, community-, and policy-levels. Using a mixed-methods research design, DELIVER will build robust quality improvement (QI) approaches in 3 phases:

DELIVER will co-develop a set of QI indicators for applicability on the practice-, community-, and policy-levels. The indicators will be fed into an EU-wide monitoring framework. Situational analyses will explore the social worlds and arenas of action for QI in Europe (WP2).

In-depth analysis of select QI approaches: DELIVER will carry out multi-country case studies to develop and test novel QI interventions: (i) PROMs/PREMs-based QI in dental practices (WP3); (ii) community-based QI in vulnerable groups (WP4); (iii) quality-oriented commissioning of oral health services (WP5). Interactive digital tools (WP6) and the regulatory determinants of oral care quality improvement (WP7) will be leveraged to support all QI approaches examined in the project.

Integrative synthesis of knowledge: the knowledge gained in the 1st and 2nd phases will be merged into the DELIVER Quality Toolkit with manuals and digital tools for concretely actionable and context-adaptive approaches for oral care quality improvement (WP8).

DELIVER is built on cutting-edge improvement science, rigorous stakeholder involvement and innovative information systems. Contributing to the UN and WHO SDG & UHC goals, DELIVER will improve access to quality oral care for everyone without financial hardship and thus generate vast impact for individuals & society.

DELIVER is prominently supported by WHO, FDI, NCD Alliance, ICHOM and many others.

  • DELIVER present at IADR 2023

    The annual general session of IADR in 2023 was held in Bogota, Colombia in July together with LAR and WCPD. DELIVER organized a symposium on the use of deliberative methods for improving oral healthcare quality and was represented by Matthew Byrne, Michael Lorenz and Paula Vassallo. In their talks, they discussed opportunities and challenges for quality improvement, how deliberative methods    in practice-based interventions can be used, the role of the patient voice in quality improvement efforts, and how deliberative methods can be used in a public health and policy context. The IADR general session is a large scientific conference in which all fields of oral and dental research are represented. The DELIVER symposium, titled 'DELIVER: Using Deliberative methods to improve oral care quality' was sponsored by the Behavioural, Epidemiological and Health Services Research (BEHSR) and e-Oral Health networks. One overarching theme of the conference was the impact of recent World Health Organization's oral health resolution  (2021),  strategic  plan (2022) and action plan (2023) on research and oral health services. It was evident from the research presented that political determinants and inequity pose major challenges to achieving the goal of access to good quality oral care for everyone. We used this conference to network with researchers from around the globe to discuss current and future research and to combine our efforts towards the best attainable oral health for everyone. 

    10.07.2025