Abstract: ADVOCATE (Added Value for Oral Care) is a project funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 program, which aims to develop strategies for a system transition toward more patient-centered and prevention-oriented oral health care delivery within health care systems. This system should balance the restorative and preventive approaches in dental and oral health care. ADVOCATE is a partnership among 6 European Union member states, which involves collaboration among universities, state-funded health care providers, and private insurance companies in Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Aridhia, a biomedical informatics company based in Scotland. There are 6 interrelated work packages, which aim to address the following objectives: 1) in-depth evaluation of oral health care systems in European Union member states to identify best system designs for oral disease prevention, 2) development of a set of measures to provide information on oral care delivery and oral health outcomes, 3) evaluation of a feedback approach in dental practice that aims to facilitate a change toward preventive oral health care delivery, and 4) economic evaluation of strategies to promote preventive oral health care and development of policy recommendations for oral health care systems. The project is novel in its use of data that are routinely collected by health insurance organizations, as well as the engagement of key stakeholders from dental teams, insurers, patients, and policy makers in guiding the development and progress of the project. This article outlines in detail the objectives and research methodology of the ADVOCATE project and its anticipated impact.
This project has received funding from the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement 635183: http:// advocateoralhealth.com. The authors declare no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article. The authors thank the members of the ADVOCATE Scientific Advisory Board—Stephen Birch, Martin Chalkley, Roger Ellwood, Ekatarina Fabrikant, Jeffery Fellows, Christopher Fox, Frank Fox, Dympna Kavanagh, John Lavis, Roger Matthews, Mariano Sanz, Paula Vassalo, and Sandra White; the members of the ADVOCATE General Assembly—Joachim Bentz, Lisa Bøge Christensen, Gail Douglas, Kenneth Eaton, Gerard Gavin, Geert van der Heijden, Renske van der Kaaden, Stefan Listl, Gabor Nagy, Karen O’Hanlon, Andrew Taylor, Helen Whelton, Noel Woods; the members of the Ethics Advisory Board—Mary Donnelly, Eckert Feifel, Jon Fistein, Evert-Ben van Veen, and Agnes Zana; the project coordinator, Anita Blakeston; and the coworkers of the ADVOCATE project—Susan Ahern, Hanny Alwicher, Fatiha Baadoudi, Robert Bryce, Julia Csikar, Frank Gabel, Christian Haux, Melinda Madlena, Neal Maskrey, Amy Rees, Kasper Rosing, Tanja Schamma, Anna-Lena Trescher, Karen Vinall-Collier, Elaine Ward, and Evangelos Zormpas.