Background and Aims: Numerous researches have been conducted in the field of dental public health in the country so far, and therefore the purpose of this study was to investigate the distribution of studies conducted in this field in terms of quantity and coverage of different subjects.
Materials and Methods: This study was conducted in 4 phases in Iran in 2023. The initial phase or the comparative study was to extract the doamins and sub-domains related to the dental public health studies, types of the research dissemination models, and the list of researchers in this field. The second phase included holding virtual Delphi meetings with researchers to finalize the information collecting checklists including the domains and sub-domains. In a virtual group of about 140 researchers, the domains and their proposed sub-domains were discussed and revisions continued until consensus was reached. In the third phase, the necessary data were collected and entered into the forms. The main source for data collection was google scholar profile. The final phase included the design of the system in the Access program for archiving and classifying information with the ability to search and report. Finally, the frequency and relative frequency of research titles were categorized according to the topic and the university conducting the research and the reports presented in the form of graphs and tables.
Results: Based on the first and second phases of the study, the selected model had 6 domains and 11 sub-domains. Epidemiology with the largest share (35%) was first rank, and the health system (30%) and health promotion (19%) ranked second and third, respectively. Ethics (1%) was at the lowest rank. Universities of Tehran (33%), Isfahan (25%) and Shahid Beheshti (22%) had the most publications in the field of community oral health. In the domian of epidemiology, oral health surveys with 204 articles (74%) and oral health risk factors with 69 articles (26%) were the highest number of published articles.
Conclusion: Some sub-domains of the community oral health filed are not well covered that might interrupt their application to improve the oral health situation in the country.
