Presenting the link between psychology and oral healthcare

Sharing his expert knowledge on caries prevention through behavioural change with the international community, Professor Newton will be exploring whether the current caries prevention and control strategies integrate a sufficiently broad range of evidence.

“Patients are vitally important in the care of their oral health but often we need them to change the way they do this”, Professor Newton explains. “While changing their behaviour can appear simple it can be challenging in practice.” Drawing from a large body of research, Professor Newton will outline simple and brief ways that dental teams can enhance patients’ capability, opportunities and motivation to change their oral health related behaviour.  

Tim Newton is a professor of psychology as applied to dentistry at the Population and Patient Health Division at King’s College’s Dental Institute. He is interested in the role of psychological theory in understanding dental behaviours and the development of theory based interventions to enhance oral health through behaviour change. He has contributed to the theoretical and methodological debates to understand and model how behaviour is socially determined.